@azimir
All I will say is your kid is smart and you should be a very proud man :)
I suggest as a linux dude myself, keep encouraging him :D and as an extra suggestion if he wants to learn more about Linux see if he wants to try out arch linux because that has taught me a lot over the time I have used it :D
I'm not sure why it isn't on their repo I know there is a .deb for it, maybe there is any other Linux launcher for Discord but for me discord just works whenever there is an update because I'm on a rolling release distro
Also steam can be a bit frustrating I brought watch dogs because it was on sale and it won't run with proton, I believe it works on lutris but I dont wanna install it just to play one game :0
Discord does provide a .deb, but I've never found a repo that carries updated versions. I've found plenty of hacks that download the latest one and install it every night, but for whatever reason, it's not kept in the various Debian repos out there.
The kids mostly use Mint with one Ubuntu machine (driver issues that worked on Ubuntu, but not Mint).
I've only barely used steam myself (no time for games: see having many kids), but I know the kids often do have to do various tweaks for games at times. I let them have full sudo on their own machines with a scorched earth policy if something goes wrong. Mostly, it seems to work and they don't bug me much.
@azimir
I know the arch repos do since I'm on it, but if they ever check out a hacked one make sure it is safe just in case!
Ive had issues with mint before, I belive I was using an Intel laptop when I faced the issue, are they on Intel ?
Games can be very annoying and yoi gotta then graphics down at least in my case :0 but in the future it will get a lot better :D have you tried the custom proton ?
Also sorry for the late reply, I have been busy ^^