"any media outlet, no matter how big an empire it is, that is not owned or funded by the state" is not the common definition of "independent media" (it's not even the definition given in the hyperlinked definition). "Independence" in this context refers to journalistic independence.
Seriously! I love the weirdo foss geeks but we need some fresh weird.
Zorin is another distro that (very successfully imo) does a windows-style taskbar with GNOME and is parent friendly, though like I said before, I think today I would go with something immutable for a non-techie because they're very hard to break.
KDE is the easiest for coming from Windows, you almost never never need the command line or anything "extra" to customize it (beyond what even Windows will allow).
GNOME (especially in Ubuntu) by default is more Macintosh-like which might appeal to some people, it's "simpler" but any customizations will require navigating the add-ons (and in my experience inevitably the command line too).
I think KDE is the one for most people who just want a functioning PC. GNOME could be good for the PC you might make for your parent. Bonus points for an immutable distro which are even harder to break.
"Always test your prototypes on the intended final target well in advance just to be sure"
If you told me r/RedditAlternatives was operated by Reddit employees it wouldn't completely shock me. But a more likely explanation for why there is no "Fedi consensus" there is that because Lemmy/Piefed is the best option, the people who try it out are more likely to actually leave Reddit.
In short, there are people trying to "make Discuit happen" because unlike Lemmy it's well, not happening.
"Different developers but can still access the same content" is a great succinct way of describing it.
Still shocking to me that /r/RedditAlternatives isn't just one big "USE LEMMY/PIEFED/MBIN" sticky post but on the other hand there are a lot of Fedi-resitant people there so maybe it's a good thing to give that illusion of choice.
I did too! Watched it on initial release but skipped the finale, then watched a second time with the finale. Like a lot of Trek it is even better the second time, there is a shocking amount of attention to detail for a silly cartoon.
My favorite aspect that LDS really nailed was that it regularly turned a Trek trope on it's head, and the "twist" in so many episodes turned out to be a positive well-intentioned misunderstanding instead of an ulterior motive.
"Stuff in my feed I don't want to see in my feed" is kind of the exact problem the Fediverse set out to solve. Nothing gets "injected" to a feed here so if you are seeing it, it's a choice to continue to do so.