That said, Ubuntu itself has been enough for my essentially computer illiterate dad. He never could use Windows but he at least learned basics on Ubuntu.
Tryp BazziteOS next instead of Pop. It's a Linux OS that's designed for gaming and comes with all drivers, emulators, proton, etc out of the box. Also based on Fedora, which in my experience does better in the gaming department.
I sometimes wonder how much of that culture is influenced by biology. In many other animals, it's a survival mechanism to feign you're doing fine even if you're injured or sick, because otherwise predators will target you and it's harder to find a mate.
I wonder if traces of that still linger and, due to our much more complex social structures and high intelligence, it's displayed culturally the way it is.
Kodi / Libreelec are in the same vein as Android TV. There extremely neutered operating systems that can basically only do that one thing, so if they failed at it, well...
You can really edit documents, run YouTube with a decent UI, possibly use sponsor block, can't do video game streaming.
Actually, I take it back, Kodi etc are more limited than Android TV on the Pi, since at least that supports Steam Link and Moonlight streaming.
So yeah, like Android, it can play the video. But it can do anything else like if I were to run any actual distro.
Moonlight is for game streaming. Basically if you want to run anything newer than an N64 on a Pi, you can stream it with moonlight from a more powerful computer. It's easy on local network, but can take a little bit more know how to set up for remote play (looked like if you want to play something on your phone away from home for example).
External video card would probably work well now that you mention it. But at that point, for what I want to use it for, I might as well do an Intel Mini PC since it would use less power.
But good project idea if I ever want to set up a Minecraft server.
Just install FydeOS then
https://fydeos.io/download/
It's essentially just ChromeOS
Doesn't get simpler than that.
That said, Ubuntu itself has been enough for my essentially computer illiterate dad. He never could use Windows but he at least learned basics on Ubuntu.