Just upgraded my M1 Air, loving the new animated wallpapers and lock screen.
My only pet peeve is that the offline phase of the upgrade took a whole 20 minutes - something which no other OS requires - yes, even for Windows, the offline phase of an upgrade is usually in single digits.
So this is something Apple definitely needs to improve upon.
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I that case, check out Fedora CoreOS.
It runs entirely in RAM, administration is super simple, no ssh, easy to update/and upgrade, immutable, minimal distro designed specifically for secure container usage.
How about Gogs? The whole thing is < 30 MB, and is lightweight enough to run on a Raspberry Pi. You can even get a native binary package if you want to run it without the overhead of Docker.
I’m afraid your info is a bit out-of-date. Firstly, most Chromebook are pretty useful even offline these days - most importantly, you can create and edit documents offline, which is the primary use-case for OP’s partner. Second, you don’t need to root a Chromebook any more to install Linux - installing Linux is literally just 4 clicks (Settings > Advanced > Developers > Linux), which would then install Debian in less than 10 minutes.
Edit: Also, Google just announced that they’re extending the support for Chromebooks to 10 years now: https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-extends-chromebook-lifespan-to-ten-years/
Chromebook might a good idea
In fact, if her needs beyond writing are limited (eg no need to play games or run some proprietary software), then a Chromebook would probably be the best option. One thing I’d recommend though is to go for an ARM based Chromebook (eg using Snapdragon or a Mediatek chipset), as these tend to have a much better battery life compared to something with an Intel or AMD CPU. ARM Chromebooks also tend to be thinner and run cooler. Also, ideally I’d recommend getting at least 8GB RAM for better multitasking.
The problem with iPads on the other hand is that they can be quite expensive, and lack some of the flexibility a Chromebook might have (eg, say you wanna store your written documents locally and then copy it to a USB drive or something). Most importantly, keyboard covers are kinda meh - especially for a writer - and the lack of a proper hinge/support means you can only use your iPad whilst it’s propped up on a table, so you can’t use it say if you’re lying on the bed or couch etc.
The other comments explained what a launcher is so I won’t go into that.
Instead, I’m here to plug one of my favorite launchers, AIO Launcher, which is a very different kind of launcher compared to the others.
Here’s what it looks like, on my Galaxy Fold 4:
AIO stands for all-in-one, and as you can see from the screenshot above, it has a lot of things, which is handy because I don’t need to open a bunch of different apps to get my news, weather, emails, calendar events, notifications etc - all of it is on my home screen, which makes it very convenient and saves me a lot of time.
The Nothing Phone is nice for that, but sadly they decided to NOT use RGB and only stick to white LEDs for some weird reason.
The other poster failed to mention the biggest advantage of Rust - it’s inherently a lot more secure and a lot less vulnerable to bugs compared to other languages. For starters, Rust is designed to eliminate common programming errors like null pointer dereferencing, buffer overflows, and data races, which can lead to serious security vulnerabilities.
Also, variables in Rust are immutable by default, which means they cannot be changed once they’re set. It’s also strongly typed, which is strictly enforced and there are no implicit conversions. PHP, however, is loosely typed and does perform implicit type conversion, which can lead to unexpected results and potential security vulnerabilities.
I could go on, but then we’d be getting a bit too technical for this space.
Sure, I mean it’s not a big deal. But it felt a bit odd considering macOS and Apple Silicon usually flies in pretty much every other task, so the lengthy update just felt a bit out of place.