I'm one of the weirdos that should be on board with this, but I'm against it. This will do harm to marginalized youth and push younger people to lie and find ways around the ban.
Plus, we saw that in Australia that the lobby behind the ban was in fact an ad agency that makes ads for gambling apps.
Here is France, the ban is probably just a way to avoid legislation against companies selling crap that isn't for kids like vape pens and sports gambling apps.
We were gifted our old work laptops. My partner and I work for the same place. She gave hers to the mother in law after I wiped Windows and put Linux on it.
I gave mine to my son. I figured that my son might want to use the touch screen I went with Gnome because it seemed a little more touch friendly. I told myself it doesn't matter because he is 8 and I can always reinstall.
I chose Debian (Stable) so I wouldn't have to deal with keeping it updated, put a root password to prevent them from going crazy with installing stuff.
I will have to put Scratch on it someday, for the moment he cares about the following:
- the LEGO website to look at instructions
- the music player to listen to soundtracks from his favourite games
- MyPaint for making drawings
He is starting to figure out the idea of folders, deleting things, undo, etc., but hasn't asked for any other software or even games yet.
I am a professor and would like for my son to learn about word processors, spreadsheets, programming, etc.. If he ever asks, I will give him the root password and let him browse the repos. Right now, I'm just happy to see him enjoy it without doing what lots of his friends do: sit in front of YouTube all afternoon.