He has an iPad 6

I believe you’d be able to load up Swift Playgrounds on that now as a “here’s a place to start” - www.apple.com/swift/playgrounds/ - it is a very safe place to start.

In general, I’m gonna ask “why?” for loading up a Linux distribution on a Mac unless there is specific software that you’re after that only runs on Linux. For the most part, launch a terminal and you’re getting 90% of what the Linux experience has to offer (Mac OSX is a unix certified operating system).

I’d look also for games that are programming under the covers or related. Factorio (circuits) and Minecraft (red stone logic) are two that come to mind first.

Shenzen I/O (and the rest of Zachtronics) along with Human Resource Machine and 7 Billion Humans might be a bit more, but also something he could “grow into”.

I would suggest staying as far away from Roblox as possible.

• Investigation: How Roblox Is Exploiting Young Game Developers - youtu.be/_gXlauRB1EQ
• Roblox Pressured Us to Delete Our Video. So We Dug Deeper. - youtu.be/vTMF6xEiAaY