If you can feel a very small tinge of existential horror when you read the words “try to”, congratulations, you’re a true *nix devotee.
If legislators get grumpy about this, just gently thwap them with your handy copy of The Unix Haters Handbook and tell them you’re working as hard as you can under the circumstances.
Can you install a VM without root? I assume the kids account isnt being out into a group with virtualization by default.
You can. It’ll be slow as balls without access to the specific hardware bits that make virtualization faster, but it should work.
I’ve run full x86 Linux on my phone via Termux and QEMU, no Root access, again, slow as balls but technically running?
I see people doing it on iOS too with UTM SE (SE standing for “Slow Edition” since Apple is anal about JIT on their platform)
On a computer it’ll be even easier, and given the extra grunt, maybe slightly less painful