Your votes are public on Lemmy. Just FYI.
Ah, no I saw the comment but missed the part where Amazon is letting other companies use the sidewalk protocol. I’m fortunate enough to have neighbors who don’t use Amazon’s stuff, but if other companies are using their tech it’s a moot point.
I wonder if any of these appliances would stop functioning if the bluetooth and wifi module was suddenly disconnected? Not actually asking, just putting the thought out there. I miss “dumb” products.
Would be easier to create a “guest” network to connect those appliances to and make it a LAN (local area network) only. Can’t phone home. Can’t download updates.
You’re probably going to find that the terminal will come up at some point no matter what version of Linux you choose.
For most I would recommend Mint, but since you mentioned having a negative experience previously, perhaps Zorin OS would be a better alternative?
If you want a hardened OS that would be difficult to break, an immutable OS may be a better route for you. Here’s a link with some options to choose from. My recommendation would be Fedora Silverblue.
As someone else mentioned, you will still need to use a password when making changes to the system. You can set it to boot without a password if you prefer to. I use Bazzite (gaming focused immutable OS; based on Fedora Silverblue) and I want to say 90% of the time I only need my password at boot.
If you need office apps, LibreOffice and Open Office should do what you need. MS office can be a challenge to get running, but the online web versions will run out of the box.
Hope that helps!
The picture reminds me of this scene from Back to the Future Part III
https://youtu.be/G_b06FHH6PA
Like one of the other comments said though, if it’s done well it could work.