School my dad teaches in used to have one of those Net. This is apparently everything you just described. GUI stuff for configuring it, playing with stuff, does mail, DNS, will run a web server, or forward ports from internal LAN machines. Hasn't crashed once. It's a box that sits in the corner.
Teachers refer to it as 'de inturnet box thing'.
Their attitude to linux remains unchanged, because they don't know what linux is, and don't really care, since they're all chuffed with themselves and their newly-acquired MSOffice skillz. There are no linux workstations, because nobody knows how to set up, maintain, and look after one. And don't have the time or inclination to learn, when only a handful of kids will want to use it, and it's one less classroom space when they're teaching kids to use MS Office. Agreed, children in schools want to learn how to 'use' a computer, not to spend their 3 hours or whatever a week trying to get Apache configured or whatever. When you have limited time to teach, the stuff must be set up and ready to go.