Both of these offer persistence. With Puppy you can choose when you shutdown to save. I think PorteuX works the same way.
bbbhltz
I don't know who those people are. But I clicked on the link. The people in the photo, they look precisely as I would have imagined them.
DistroWatch has a filter for that
https://distrowatch.com/search-mobile.php?category=Live+Medium#simple
Try be sure to include various DEs or WMs for your friend to see (KDE, Xfce, GNOME, LXQt, and maybe a tiling WM?)
Shmupdate:
GreyLancer (oldie but a goodie, too tempting to play on easy mode with rewinds so replay value is lowish, but was still very enjoyable.)
Crisis Wing (love the graphics, good difficulty levels for near-beginner.)
Radiant Silvergun (what the hell were they smokin at Treasure!? Even on very easy this is going to take me at least 25 hours to beat using every life/ship I can get. Probably double that! In the first hour of play I went from "well this is garbage" to "oh, I see, you just need to put in the time and effort and then it's awesome.)
Still haven't finished the boss rush on Andro Dunos II so those extra levels will be a mystery to me...
R-Type Dimensions EX is on sale right now, so I'll probably buy that tomorrow.
Accelerated Mobile Pages
Main issue, for me at least, is about locking publishers into a Google-built version of the Web that generates less revenue for the publisher and sometimes uses more data for the end user.
I found Iconoclasts to be pretty uplifting to play. The ending is marvellously satisfying.
The Shantae games are good.
Disney Illusion Island fits in here too.
Excellent game. Still never quite finished it. I think have 3 screens left.
Handbrake is the tool that comes to mind. You've already mentioned FFmpeg which is what I always try to use.
I've always liked FF. We had FF1 on the NES back when but the battery in it was dead so we had to the leave the console on. My brother got through it after a good number of afternoons.
I never got into it though. I like watching it. I remember the obsession around FFVII.
Then I picked up one of those SNES Mini things that came with... FFIV. That one got me. I wasn't surprised to find out that loads of people love that one in particular.
Wow, LXQt is just motoring along aren't they. I use LXQt as my daily driver, but on good old Debian Stable I won't be seeing this for years haha. Looks like it is only available in the AUR and on Pisilinux (which is cool because it's only just been released!).