I don't have a computing-age child yet, but I aim to steer them down the Linux road. I've been given 3-4 Macbooks over the years which are now far too old to ru

I don't have a computing-age child yet, but I aim to steer them down the Linux road. I've been given 3-4 Macbooks over the years which are now far too old to run modern macOS at any reasonable level of performance, but I suspect they will run Ubuntu etc just fine and make a decent first machine. Maybe starting out in this environment will also prompt the same curiosity that I developed which led into confidence/skill/a career, just by having access to settings and the like (which seem to be increasingly stowed away or removed altogether). I also hope that starting out in Linux instills the same "ugh, GTFO my machine" response in them that I get when I encounter the kind of default/forced cruft the OP did.