I don’t think so. I think it takes 1 kid in the playground to find out about https://distrosea.com/ without understand what a container or VM even is, only discovering that somehow it works, to make us of it.

Then the school admin will block it once there is a peak of traffic through the website, kids will discover proxies, someone will realize there is a business for it, make a free version with ads, etc. It’s going to be an arm race and the most dedicated kids, not necessarily the smartest or wisest, will figure it out. Eventually they’ll get the concepts behind the tools they mindlessly use until then, eventually find much better tools allowing them to bypass a lot more restrictions.

I don’t see how a browser will be able to prevent this kind of usage. They might pass age related information to each page requesting it but it takes a single page to provide the capability without using the information to be enough. If a kid has a computer at home they can setup such a service themselves.

You read my mind. So straightforward.

I suggest to replace RTFM by WHYTSF : What Have You Tried So Far.

The goal isn’t to blame or guilt trip anyone, rather it’s to genuinely help and for that others need to know… WHYTSF?!

Most distributions include Wine AFAICT yet I’d argue you shouldn’t use Wine because typically it means using proprietary software.

If you are using Wine for games then it’s also reconsider that there are plenty of open source game you can still pay for to support their author.

If you still want to play proprietary Windows games without native support then I would recommend to use a wrapper, e.g. Bottles (because of Proton, not because of the GUI) or even Steam (since you want to play proprietary Windows games anyway) as they’ll remove a layer of tinkering to find the right version, path, etc (basically prefix management).

… but yeah, even though Wine is amazing I would argue every time one uses it, if they are using Linux because they want more agency, they probably should reconsider and search for a free software alternative instead. It will be awkward at first, other UI, other UX, new community, but it’s an investment in the future.

I imagine you did the math already but between the time it takes, the cost to get there and the actual price of paying for the machine I’d consider entry level washing machine (even if you won’t use it for years and you might have to sell it when you move) or a 2nd hand one (especially if you are ready to fix one, could be free). Out of curiosity I checked in Belgium a basic new machines is ~300e and a 2nd that works (but is loud) starts at 40e. It takes some space though but you can stack things on it, again if you are handy installing a plank over. Additionally if you know some people nearby you can trust, you could split the cost.

… but yes, nobody needs a car for that. People are so “afraid” of a bit of rain it’s silly, just dress accordingly.

PS: others mentioned a cart, if things get heavy that’s definitely what I’d recommend. When I buy heavy groceries, typically drinks, that’s what I prefer. It’s way easier than putting things on your back. For dry clothes though maybe it’s less maneuverable.

I haven’t tested this myself but I assume one could benchmark both and see if there is noticeable performance loss.

FWIW the SteamDeck running official SteamOS does have a full desktop environment, it’s just hidden by starting Steam in Big Picture mode.

So… you could benchmark the “gain” but I doubt it’s significant, if any.

Also if you do like to play with hardware for gaming across networks checking Selkies or Moonlight to stream from your machine to your machine, no intermediary, little latency or overhead.

If a kid is smart enough to set up a VM like that they are smart enough to deceive adults.

That’s my point of Internet Archive software and emulation section : no need to be smart, open a Web page that provides a VM and voila. You don’t have to do anything hard, only understand the concept and know where to find a VM.

Also if it’s properly all in the browser (no backend setup, no tailscale, which I’m not sure it can be done due to networking, but maybe) then any static host can have it, heck even download a .html and open it would do. In such a situation I can’t imagine it can be blocked/limited at all.

Yes I also would much prefer everything to be done locally and have no 3rd party that ultimately I won’t trust (one just has to look at leaks from large companies to understand why) still “it’s their responsibility” when I tried to demonstrate it’s fundamentally impossible when emulation exists is a fundamental problem.

PS: FWIW https://ktock.github.io/qemu-demo/

In theory yes.

What’s bad though is that it’s meaningless. Sure the OS can say you are 10 years old or 100 years old and you can’t change it… but then you open a page in your browser which runs a virtual machine and that VM now says you are, arbitrarily 50 years old. The VM is just another piece of software but put it in fullscreen (if you want) and voila, you are back to declaring whatever age you want to any application or Web page within that VM. If that’s feasible (and I fail to see how it wouldn’t, see countless examples in https://archive.org/details/software or https://docs.linuxserver.io/images/docker-webtop/ even though that’s running on another machine, so imagine that was a SaaS) then only people who aren’t aware of this might provide a meaningful information on the actual age but that’s temporary, the same way more and more people now learn to use a VPN.

Why? I have a hard time imagine a use case where restoring the OS itself would be appropriate.

I can imagine restoring data, obviously, and services running with their personalization … but the OS is something generic that should be discarded at whim IMHO. You probably chance few basic configuration of some services and most likely that’s stored in /etc but even then 99% is default.

You can identify what you modified via shell history, e.g. history | grep /etc and potentially save them or you can also use find /etc -type f -newerXY with a date later than the OS installation and you should find what you modified. That’s probably just a few files.

If you do back up anything beyond /home (which should be on another partition or even disk than the OS anyway) you’ll most likely save garbage like /dev that might actually hinder your ability to restore.

So… sure, image the OS if you actually have a good reason for it but unless you work on archiving and restoring legacy hardware for a museum then I doubt you do need that.