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The distro is up to you. The desktop is up to them. Give them all the possible options.

If you use a distro like openSUSE, you can easily add KDE, GNOME, XFCE, LXDE, Enlightenment and others. I would probably stick with the main three, with a personal like to XFCE.

Alxso see if there are people who use excel intensivaly, because that could be tricky.

So you choose the distro, they choose the desktop. Takea distro that you already use. The desktop should be available for it.

And don't forget that installing it is the easy part. Maintaining it and the next 10 years (with upgrades and new hardware) will be the hard part. One last tip. Don't talk about free as in gratis, because management will then asume that there is no cost and the moment anything computer related shows up on budget, it will be confusing and you will be called a liar.

You can also play around with SUSE Studio so you easily can make images that contain not all applications, but only those that you need, including anything you made yourself.

The builds could be used as beta for the final release for yoiur company.

Isn't Mint a distribution? So you should be able to make ity look like anything out there. I believe XFCE would look the most familiar.

For the user, look at the desktop. For the admin, look at the distribution.

As an admin, I would probably use something like SUSEStudio.com, because it would mean I would be able to easily make an installable image that looks likeI would want it with the programs I desire.

A bit of extra work and you have something that is really tailord for your company. You can make two images. One for clients and one for servers. Or go evebn further and edit YaST so you have only one image for several options. Portable, desktop, software selections per department, ...

Obviously the work you put will depend on how large the company is.

And if anyone wants to try KDE 4.13 (or whatever version KDE you want) without having to install it on your system, the best way is to test it in your browser with susestudio .. better than a simulation, an almost real system in your browser

http://susestudio.com/ and make your own. As light or as heavy as you desire.
A starting point is JeOS. From the first page:
You can export your custom operating system as a Virtual machine, Live USB Disk, CD/DVD-ROM, Hard Disk Image and so much more.

As you want something very specific a great way would be SUSE Studio. Because I might want just a little bit different configuration then what you would want.

There never WAS an official XFCE ISO. There are several way to get XFCE without installing the rest
1) Download the DVD and do the installation. During installation you select Other instead of KDE/GNOME and select XFCE or LXDE there
2) Do a network install and select XFCE or LXDE just like above
2a) http://www.houghi.org/ssh/install.php and then do the same as above. Basically this is a network install without the iso.
3) Wait for http://susestudio.com/ to have 12.2 available and make your own image.

Believe it or not, not all of us have ultra-high speed Internet connections.

And if you do, why would you download a DVD? I do the installation with the bare basics. http://houghi.org/ssh/install.php
Basically I download init and linux kernel and install from that (over ssh with GUI if I so desire) and download only those things I actually use.

Or turn the network CD into a USB bootable image if there is no previous Linux installed as described on http://en.opensuse.org/Live_USB_stick#Bootable_USB_from_DVD_or_Net-install
Or I make my own on http://susestudio.com/ if I need to install more with specific settings.

Doing a network install might even be interesting for those who are limited with their data as you only download what you actually install and not all the rest that you never install.

Ha! Ha. ... no wait, that makes more sense than I expected.

Why do we need an OS that is installed? I've used Ubuntu, CentOS, Slax and other live CDs and been impressed with how well they do what I want. With Novell Suse Studio I could build my own Customized OS which isn't ever installed on the computer. I already store all my important data on a pair of external USB drives, but I'd rather have my main hard drive handle the job. If I didn't have to worry about installing the OS, I could boot every time to the same system until I wanted an update and just burn a new CD or update the usb stick I boot from.

I heard a Staples guy talk about how he was doing exactly that sort of thing and it bugs me. I've never been able to get an OS on a stick to meet my demands, but I should be able to. In the future, I'd love to see computers sold with "and here is your OS stick, it comes with Window 9, Ubuntu, PC-BSD and Mac Alleycat but you can update those or come back and get an updated version anytime you like for $99."

Perhaps meanwhile the students could make use of a simpler App maker called Illumination.

What's openSUSE's future look like? Since Novell is slowly dying, are we going to see openSUSE fade from being the #2 / #3 distro?

First of all I don't know if Novell is dying. Novell is Acquired by Attachmate Corporation.

Secondly the openSuSE community is very big and is operating on more or less independently from Novell.

Even if Novell would dying I think other companies would by the SuSE part with SLES. As SLES quality is also due to the openSuSE quality I don't think a owner of SLES would not support openSuSE.

I as a openSuSE packages still foresee a bright future for openSUSE and SLES also because the community around openSuSE is growing. And there are great projects within openSuSE like the openSUSE Build Service (Multi distro packaging framework), SUSE Studio (Build a custom distro), etc

http://susestudio.com/ for the updating/installsoins http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page for repairing .... the rest idk but i bet its somewhere

http://susestudio.com/

Build your own image with USB as your target. The process is simple and streamlined (and they have videos).

http://susestudio.com/ allows you to make your own. This can then be done as USB stick, CD/DVD, VMware and what not. You can decide if you want it to be installable or not, add your own specific software and almost anything else you like.

How far you go to make things special is up to you.

However, you will always have non-supported hardware. Happens with any OS, except for the one that was pre-installed and then hope people have not added hardware.

Easy customisation to your needs, has few virtual machines as targets.

http://susestudio.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SUSE_Studio

I made something like this in the past just as a proof of concept with openSUSE 11.1 and the use of SUSE Studio.Was not to hard to make and with a bit of effort could be done much better.

Boots into GUI with Opera as GUI. It was just a proof of concept, because will you trust the following?
Disk Image for e.g. USB stick
WMware Image
Life CD Image

So trust might be one reason not to use it. Another reason is that unless you run VMware, it is pretty inconvenient to reboot your PC to do banking. People who will use this, will most likely already be aware of what security is and thus not really need it.

I made something like this in the past just as a proof of concept with openSUSE 11.1 and the use of SUSE Studio.Was not to hard to make and with a bit of effort could be done much better.

Boots into GUI with Opera as GUI. It was just a proof of concept, because will you trust the following?
Disk Image for e.g. USB stick
WMware Image
Life CD Image

So trust might be one reason not to use it. Another reason is that unless you run VMware, it is pretty inconvenient to reboot your PC to do banking. People who will use this, will most likely already be aware of what security is and thus not really need it.

I made something like this in the past just as a proof of concept with openSUSE 11.1 and the use of SUSE Studio.Was not to hard to make and with a bit of effort could be done much better.

Boots into GUI with Opera as GUI. It was just a proof of concept, because will you trust the following?
Disk Image for e.g. USB stick
WMware Image
Life CD Image

So trust might be one reason not to use it. Another reason is that unless you run VMware, it is pretty inconvenient to reboot your PC to do banking. People who will use this, will most likely already be aware of what security is and thus not really need it.

It will not matter to them. Any distribution will be OK. Perhaps better focus on GNOME or KDE. Next see what you are comfortable with. Is that RPM or DEB based?

As you will be the maintainer, see that auto-update is configured.

Now if you are going to do a lot of installs and you want to configure them in a specific way with some software installed and other software removed, take a look at http://susestudio.com./ You can easily make your own distribution and even already add things like MPlayer and codecs so that they will have a fully operational system. If you have the rights to use and/or distribute e.g. codecs is another question. No idea about YOUR legal situation.

SUSE studio lets you test it and also build live CD, HD images and the like.

Only you can tell. If you are happy with what you have, stay where you are. (This also goes for Windows users.) If you are interested in trying out, download it and try it out. I use it as I like YaST and zypper. I also like to use it to combine it with the repositories I can make myself on https://build.opensuse.org/ and I like it because I can easily make my own distro based on it on http://susestudio.com/

I also welcome it. Many people have already used it and seened to be happy with it. I will wait till 11.3 till I use it. Although by then I hope to be just using my own distri that I will be making on http://susestudio.com/

http://en.opensuse.org/SUSE_Studio_API
http://susestudio.com/help/api/v1

You can do pretty much everything with curl.

Also, you can export to KIWI from Studio.

I think some of the questions about feature availability, costs, etc. have been answered by Nat & Team, and should be available in channel logs, along with a bunch of other good stuff.

1) does it force the use of RPM? Some prefer DEB, or even ebuilds.
It is SLE and openSUSE based distro's so yes, you will be best to use RPM.

2) potential for HyperVM, Virtualbox, etc images? Would be nice to see them.
You can make USB, ISO, Xen and VMware Virsual Machine images.

3) kernels? what about kernels? Can you config your own? How about patches?
This builds the image, not the software. You can point it to any repository you desire, so if you make your own repository with the kernel in it with e.g. https://build.opensuse.org/, you can use it.

What it does is 'just' make an image.
Some screenshots I have made here: http://houghi.org/susestudio/

Updates and patches will be gotten from openSUSE or Novell or somewhere else if you point it somewhere else.

Just go to http://susestudio.com/ and click on the "Watch a screencast" or go to http://susestudio.com/screencast for two more movies that explain just what and how things work.

1) does it force the use of RPM? Some prefer DEB, or even ebuilds.
It is SLE and openSUSE based distro's so yes, you will be best to use RPM.

2) potential for HyperVM, Virtualbox, etc images? Would be nice to see them.
You can make USB, ISO, Xen and VMware Virsual Machine images.

3) kernels? what about kernels? Can you config your own? How about patches?
This builds the image, not the software. You can point it to any repository you desire, so if you make your own repository with the kernel in it with e.g. https://build.opensuse.org/, you can use it.

What it does is 'just' make an image.
Some screenshots I have made here: http://houghi.org/susestudio/

Updates and patches will be gotten from openSUSE or Novell or somewhere else if you point it somewhere else.

Just go to http://susestudio.com/ and click on the "Watch a screencast" or go to http://susestudio.com/screencast for two more movies that explain just what and how things work.

SuSE Studio would be good for that

susestudio.com