With the Chrome Incognito mode you can do all of your stuff on a cookie to cookie basis. Just do something, log out, close incognito, then open again. Of course this involves trust that incognito is real.
I kept looking at the sawhorses that were strewn about the landscape. I decided to draw what I thought a sawhorse should look like. There are plenty of better ones out there. But I wanted anyone to be able to build one.
Definitely brought a smile to my face. I loved Matchbox and I liked Hotwheels cars. I would play for hours and hours. I think the best part of the whole toy was the size. Easy to put in your pocket as a kid and with two there was a whole adventure to be had anywhere.
I loved to take car with me on a road trip and just peek through the windows as if I was driving in the car. Great stuff. Again, the size was what made these cars a great toy.
LibreOffice is outstanding. I've used it since 1999 when it was Star Office. You can write anything and export to PDF easily. You can also share your work with MS Office users. Writing business letters is a simple discipline. Content and simplicity go hand in hand. LibreOffice will also work for you on Windows or Linux. Finally anyone who claims LibreOffice is dated probably doesn't know that humans have been writing for 4 thousand years and we have never had it so good as we do now!
Since the Universe is spiraling toward oblivion and expanding I think that you are well on your way. Humans are masters of paradox which is kind of like dark matter appearing and disappearing at the same time in two different places. We are software as a service.
The closest to a reasonable application is meditation where you sit down and do absolutely nothing as close as possible. Reasonably easy to acquire, meditation allows for communication to leap over bottlenecks in spite of language.
Upon reading this sit quietly with your spine straight for 5 minutes while focused on your breathing. This is the amount of time it takes to download the meditation app. Once you have this installed it is only a matter of sitting down again with your spine erect while paying attention to your breathing to utilize it. Any thoughts that come during this time should be recognized as thoughts and ignored. After 5, 10, 15, 20 or 30 minutes. Go back to doing whatever it was you were doing. Meditation can never be taken from you once it is installed.
Lubuntu and Xubuntu are also good and easy to use. Puppy Linux is great for hobby but I think the idea of learning to develop would be helped by the more stable Lubuntu or Xubuntu.
I have been using Linux since 1999. I currently use Linux Mint on two different systems. If you go to https://www.linuxmint.com/download.php you can choose from the modern Cinnamon, Mate and KDE to the legacy supporting XFCE.
I currently use Cinnamon on an i5 Samsung laptop and I use XFCE on an eMachine that is ten years old. %99.9 of Ubuntu packages will also run on Linux Mint. The desktops for XFCE and Cinnamon / Mate are easy to navigate. There is great support and a large community.
There is also a rolling distribution using Debian which is a distro that does not need to be upgraded since it is constantly getting updates. Does not run Ubuntu packages, but you will learn better development skills and this is what powers Ubuntu and Linux Mint. https://www.linuxmint.com/download_lmde.php For an older Laptop this may not be a good choice.
If you want to focus on development and at the same time have a system that can handle modern stuff like Netflix, LibreOffice and Google Chrome then try Linux Mint XFCE.