I have a nine year-old daughter, and I'm trying to figure out how to get her started with Minecraft. I mean she's interested, but she needs help installing the software, creating an account, connecting to a server, etc. Personally, I'm puzzled by the sprawling Minecraft ecosystem. There appear to be many different editions. Are they all interoperable? Are some notably better? Do they all have a cost? Should I expect a one-time cost like the old shrink-wrapped, boxed PC games that I bought as a kid, or is it a subscription like everything else these days?
Last year her school work involved doing things on a computer for the first time, so I'm guiding her through the earliest stages of computer literacy. I declined the Chromebook offered by her school and instead set her up with my old laptop running Fedora. At some point I introduced her to simple classics like SuperTux, tetris, and a lunar lander game that are available from Flathub. Just searching Flathub for Minecraft, I see half a dozen different flatpaks(?). Then it looks like I can download a .tar.gz from minecraft.net and maybe build something from source(?). Help me out.