I guess you could install cockpit (via Terminal, sorry, but it’s pretty straightforward and there are good guides). After that, you could use the cockpit web interface to deploy docker/podman containers. It’s a bit clunky sometimes, but it does the job purely in UI.

You can also manage updates, backups, etc via cockpit if you install the required modules.

As base, I’d use any stable Linux distro that’s reccomended for server use.

Edit: Comment was in wrong place, refiled as op level comment.

I’ve put Fedora on my mum’s pc after it became clear that Win10 will EoL soon, and that Win11 would refuse to run on it. Have had significantly fewer support requests since then.

Her work is mostly done via Citrix, which has an official Fedora Client. Everything else happens in the Browser, or sometimes in OnlyOffice, which so far has worked as a drop-in replacement for MS Office.

As always, it really depends on the use case.

Yeah, sure. Just don’t look at the last election results.