To summarise: use a terminal server system if you can, using a desktop for the end user that can be made to behave like windows (or another concept that works for your demography), and have the whole setup in a NixOS configuration that you manage in git.

I see that https://github.com/ltsp/ltsp is still going strong.

Yeah, plus the cold war, pop and house music and the surge of widely available drugs. It’s a wonder most of us Gen Xers even made it this far.