Is that so different than in previous generations? Even back in the C64 era most kids just played games from disks they bought.
If you got into computers any time from the mid-90s, you would have been using Windows and that’s it.
Smartphones always came with their predetermined OS without a command line or programming tools on them. (There where apps for that on many systems, but in general, that wasn’t a thing most users used.)
From the 80s on, programming wasn’t required to use a PC and most users never learned it.
In general, people would just use pre-made software, because they use a PC/smartphone as a tool to do what they want to.
It’s kinda like with any other tools. People buy a hammer because they need to get a nail into a wall. Only very few people are interested in a hammer itself and get into the art of making their own tools.
Probably to play games, access the internet and maybe do their homework. Most probably, they don’t use Windows because they specifically enjoy working with Windows, but because it easily lets them do whatever they actually want to do on a PC.
Spending 5h on fixing some weird incompatibility between the Nvidia GPU, your DE and Proton might be fun for some, but it’s most probably not what your kid wants to do when they could be gaming or doing whatever they actually want to do. Problems like that can scare them off quickly.
So first setup the PC so that everything they usually do on Windows works without issues.
The next question is, why would your kid want to run Linux instead of Windows?
The usual advantages (FOSS, free to use, better for developers) don’t really matter to most kids. The only things I can think of right now are:
Runs on PCs that aren’t Win11 compatible
Some games like Minecraft run faster (but some games also run slower)
With the setup completed and advantages thought of, you can let the kid use Linux quite similarly to Windows. When the kid wants new software or has an issue, work together with them to get everything running. First do everything and let them watch, later let them do more and more of the process.
Any experience with teaching kids Linux?
Any one here has any experience with teaching 8 to 12 years old kids Linux?