Snap is a sandboxed environment to install applications in.
Flatpak is a more portable implementation of the same broad idea, it downloads a chroot and runs applications from within using a separate program called bubblewrap (one could, in theory, use chroot to run apps from within the downloaded flatpak images, bubblewrap offers further isolation through things like namespaces and cgroups etc. )
Snap, unlike flatpak, is a Canonical specific implementation that has a reputation for breaking a lot of things.
PL can have a large impact on features, bugs, bug reports, troubleshooting, performance and documentation. Particularly when dev resources are limited.
It’s hard to see how this opinion holds any water.
Rust is a great choice for a shell built as an interactive shell that doesn’t have to be core to the OS. Over C++ this also makes development more accessible to young programmers.
The high quality institutions have Linux in their labs (either a separate lab or dual boot) and a server with say access for training ML models etc.
The dodgy ones have only Windows with no software and require students to buy a second laptop and install Linux. If they don’t the students fail. Those tests were done in handwriting but they are still an accredited university :(
You basically have BSD and Linux and in the Linux space {glibc/musl systemd/openrc/runit PKGBUILD,ebuild,deb,rpm} which seems like a lot but it’s the really niche stuff that’s fun to pull apart and play with.
I absolutely love void. Second to that I would say endeavour, it’s just arch with zfs, a wm and an installer.
If you’re interested in learning more try , I use oddlama’s installer. With binary packages, distrobox and flatpak, the small amount of compile time is a much smaller issue.
Alternatively, if you’re thinking about Fedora maybe play with Silverblue, it forces you to learn a bit of containerisation which is handy