In addition to dedicated lessons, remember to just play around and have fun too. You don't want to turn it into a chore. Spending some time diving in blind can be a lot of fun and a great learning experience as well.
I'd say if you plan on using it any public places, or if you don't have full control over all the computers/technology in your home network, it's a good idea to run one. It's a nice last resort should someone on the same lan have a piece of malicious software.
Absolutely not. Sure, neither will give you the Dallas Cowboys, but Elon wouldn't even give you the Denver Broncos.
For SF, I recommend Primer. Its definitely a challenging movie as there's no clear exposition, but I found myself wanting to watch it several times to piece it altogether.
There's pros and cons to both platforms and there's plenty of people willing to argue each side. I wouldn't necessarily focus on this as much as trying to find the laptop she's most physically comfortable typing on. Also for an aspiring writer you may want to look into a screen that's easy on the eyes over long periods.
We have a 15 year old who started recently. Once we found the correct dosage it made a huge difference in his overall behavior. I found the testing to be trickier than administering the insulin. Ultimately I settled on the tester below, and found it easiest to get the blood sample from the ear tip. After about a week, we developed a good system for the testing as well. Best of luck!
AlphaTRAK 3, 8 Piece Pet Blood Glucose Monitoring Kit for Diabetic Cats and Dogs, All-in-One Solution for in-Clinic Or at Home, with Digital Results https://a.co/d/gvL9AcS
It can definitely feel overwhelming, so start simple. Install a basic well known distro; I'm partial to Fedora, but Ubuntu is also a great choice. You'll learn a ton just by using it day in and out for typical tasks. If you need help reach out to the community. If anyone comes off as rude I recommend just ignoring and blocking them. Using it will eventually come to feel second nature like MacOS or Windows. Enjoy!
I don't think it's necessary. There's ways to connect with people irl; taking a course for example. I do find social media can be useful for finding people with similar interests, but that doesn't require posting your whole life online.
I find roku to have the simplest interface for people to learn. Fill it with free channels like tubi and pluto. For your personal library I'd suggest jellyfin. Simple and free.
As you can see there's lots of excellent choices. Check out distrosea.com if you want to get a feel for different ones without installing. FWIW I prefer Fedora and RPM based distros as I've found their hardware support to be a bit better than Debian based. This is just personal experience though so your's may differ. Please report back on what you ultimately choose.
Try not to look at it as getting a $100 of technology, but rather if you'd get $100 dollars of entertainment out of it.
I personally use Niagara after years of Nova. I like it's clean presentation and the alphabet on the side to quickly jump to less frequently used apps. I will say though, if you've experimented with other launchers and still come back to Pixel, there's nothing wrong with that. It sounds like it meets your needs.