Have a look at miller

FlatPak and snaps are not only solving the universal packing problem, but in addition: providing necessary libraries which are not present on the main system; an be installed on multiple architectures (x86, arm, etc); sandboxed.

You are thinking of Xed

My problem with matrix is that you need email address to use it. Compared to the irc, where you could just use whatever name and ask questions straight away. Most distros I used came with an irc client preinstalled and preconfigured to connect to the support channel when launched. In my opinion that is more beginner friendly.

Have a look at thinStation

Replace the HDD with SSD. It will run faster. You can configure any DE to look similar to windows, maybe Gnome to the lesser extend. One think to keep in mind when choosing the distro, you have to support it. Good luck.

Nautilus used to have Split pane mode

A bit of history. The first universal packaging format was snap by Canonical and used to be called Click apps and it was made for the Ubuntu mobile OS and later to the Ubuntu desktop. Red Hat in response to that created the FlatPak format. The AppImages are community effort.

Yes. You are right. Thanks. Just listened to the Linux Matters podcast episode about this. Crazy.

It is on the FlatHub as well.

Laughing in Linux From Scratch.

You can use something like PairDrop instead. It is open source and browser based.

Have a look at Super Productivity it is a todo list app with projects, time tracking, break time reminder. It is completely offline, no registration required.

A bit of history. The first universal packaging format was snap by Canonical and used to be called Click apps and it was made for the Ubuntu mobile OS and later to the Ubuntu desktop. Red Hat in response to that created the FlatPak format. The AppImages are community effort. As you can see since both snap and FlatPak are developed and supported by a company they are more widely available and easier to search, install and update them. There are multiple tools for AppImages as well, which can search, install an update, however they are not pre installed or can be installed from the repo on most distro. There are dielstros which ship AppImage support by default with App Store for example Nitrux. You can use AppMan or bauh for managing AppImages. The AppMan has command line interface and bauh is a graphical application. Bauh can also manage snap and FlatPak.

If you don’t want to use Nix packages or DistroBox, you can try an alternative which is in the fedora repository, like Qodem

Oh nooo, so I have a useless project now?

Perhaps, consider contributing to HyprGreen

Something like Sugar or Doudoulinux would perhaps be more suitable for your daughter.

Doudoulinux has not been updated since ages , but it will run very well on any old laptop.

I am using AppMan as it does not require root and it does install the files into my home directory. It uses query parameter instead of search, but the install, update and remove are similar to the apt commands for example. I use AppImages when there is no package in the repository (or only older version) and it is not available as a Flatpak.

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You can use AM or AppMan. It is a command line tool for managing AppImages. Including download , install, update and remove.

Have a look at

https://portable-linux-apps.github.io/

It is also open source.