That’s a bummer that CSAM is still being posted. I get that y’all need to stop the people posting it immediately, and I agree with whatever you need to do to make that happen. However, I hope you can find a solution later down the road that allows VPN users to continue fully interacting with the site.
Does the mouse need drivers? You could search for the model name and “Linux drivers” to see if the company offers anything
I strongly recommend Mint Cinnamon for those coming from Windows. It just works and feels similar, though it’s not a perfect comparison and will require you to explore things a little bit. Even so, you should be able to run most things without the command line or worrying about how the OS and file system are structured
TIL that plain TeX is a thing.