The most correct answer so far is Win11 IoT. But there’s a good chance it won’t have enough “windows” for your school needs.

If you’re just trying to get work done and not trying to stick it to the man with the purity test that this thread seems to insist upon, you can install normally and force an offline user. (Microsoft keeps threatening to kill this capability, it still worked last time I tried early last year.)

Then run Chris Titus debloat utility before you set up anything else.

If you don’t have a registration, you can activate it with massgrave.dev.

Self signed for this use case is fine. you know and trust both ends of your connection, and no one else needs to know or trust either end of the connection.

lol I started to reply, suggesting a recommendation feature to help find non-algorithmic tech feeds but then realized that’s exactly how all this started.

While I support the idea of using RSS readers to break free from algorithmic and/or AI curated feeds, I’ve mostly stopped bothering, since all the content that gets into the feeds has become algorithmic, AI slop.

There’s just no escaping it these days.

missing a way to find out what they do without installing them

At the very top of the project page it says:

Termix is a web-based server management platform with SSH terminal, tunneling, and file editing capabilities.

Now you know what it does without installing it

You’re confusing a lack of handholding with gatekeeping.

beginner friendly solution, something with a UI, fewer manual configs…

First, you’re not entirely right. you can get a ton of self hosting done with things like Synology or Home assistant, and never see the complexity. You might get owned by a botnet, but it “works.”

Self hosting securely has a steep learning curve, there’s no way around that. What you’re asking for is for someone to write programs that’ll let you skip the learning curve.

GitHub is littered with abandoned attempts at doing this. You bury your lede by mentioning “your project” at the end. It’s your project going to be another well intentioned attempt that’s eventually abandoned or causes more problems than it solves?

it does not.

.gov.fr. is a subdomain of .fr., unrelated to .gov…

At some point you had to learn all about debugging the overly-complicated and annoying OS that runs your full installs, didn’t you?

per the searxng container instructions:

Understanding container architecture basics is essential for properly maintaining your SearXNG instance. This guide assumes familiarity with container concepts and provides deployment steps at a high level.

The fact that you’re logging into your container to manually edit your config hints that you need to read more about managing containers.

Make sure you’re editing the file that you’re mounting on the host, and edit it from the host.

Have you checked the actual log with podman logs? It’ll tell you what it’s doing about its config.