This typically means a standard image the school can manage that has reasonable device management, with a company they can pay, and that their in-house IT can contact for support when the unexpected, unforseeable issues happen.
I have yet to hear one suggest ChromeOS or any Android tablet; those run the Linux kernel, but don't (AFAIK) use nearly any of the GNU software.
And I kind of get it. We've all seen the copy-pasta, and this division took on a life as a joke about a crazy person that takes things too far. But most of the people that make that joke seem to have forgotten that RMS frequently starts off looking crazy, but is nearly always vindicated. Sometimes it's five years, sometimes it's twenty. But it happens more often that not.
I tentatively lean towards calling it "desktop Linux", or perhaps "user-controlled Linux" since that's rather the important part.
Thanks, I will change that in the article. I appreciate your feedback
User-controlled might be the best I've seen so far, which is really saying something - all it's missing is what happens when it's issued (and administered) by a school or other org.
Now I'm gonna be rolling around phrases like "libre-encouraging Linux" in my head the next few days.
Because Chromebook is Linux + Google proprietary ecosystem & spyware.
When advocates say Linux they just mean the FOSS Linux + FOSS software.