As others have stated, it's a tiling window manager. Many, including me, prefer it to the usual floating window managers that most desktops use.
But I've been using sway since switching to wayland after years with i3. I see lots of hyprland hype, but i'm happy with my sway workflow and don't see anything about hyprland that makes me want to switch or even try it out.
I switched from ubuntu to debian when 12 was released and it's been fine. Only thing i was worried about was running WoW via lutris but had no issues.
So when my SO windows pc died we bought some newish parts and i installed debian on it as well. Also installed chrome since that's her browser of choice. She's still getting used to gnome, but all she needs is browser, WoW, and libreoffice, which is close enough that it hasnt been an issue. She doesn't even know how to update the system.
I teach my physics undergraduates the basics of latex for writing. They usually figure it out. It's basically like writing some code. The biggest pain are graphs. And like a lot of code these days, chatgpt can help a lot.
If you just need to write basic text formatted using apa, you could find or create a template and give it to your students. Then they won't even need to think about the formatting cause the template will deal with it all correctly.
Oh, i should add, in that screenshot, most of that code creates the fornatting. Once that is set, your actual content with words and paragraphs looks mostly like text.
Start with a minimal preamble and start testing it out.
Linux mint or fedora are great options. I'd probably recommend mint as usually geared more to those switching from windows and the forums and communities might be more helpful for beginners.
I'd avoid ubuntu these days. While not horrendous, i've run into enough annoyances with their snap package manager that there's just no reason to learn this additional thing for a beginner.
I'm pretty sure it's a cucumber plant. I planted them for the first time this year and they grow those little things to grab onto stuff for support. It's really neat!
I was employed at this awesome little school but left before Desantis's stupid anti-woke and DEI crusade. I hope it and the current students/employees don't suffer too much. I doubt Desantis gets voted out...
No. You don't manually place apps on homescreen. I have it configured to only show one row of favorites, which are categorized as "pinned - manually sorted". Than the rest of my favorites are seen when i swipe to app drawer.
Can do homescreen icons. It has a widgets "pane". You don't place them on the home screen but put all widgets together than swipe to widgets. You can configure kvaesitso so it's not too different from stock android experience.
I have 5 "favorite" apps at bottom of screen, above the search bar, similar to stock android.
I swipe left for my app drawer, which allows for more pinned favorites above full list.
I too would be put off if it had to be used that way. But it can be used as a regular icon tapping launcher - it has a regular app drawer - which is how i use it. I don't think it should market itself as a "search-focused" launcher.
This is a normal, regular task in dwarf fortress.