Hoping this might help you find a way to reach to the young people you have to work with:
I remember my young self being primarily concerned with being right about the world rather while also believing nothing I could do at my level could matter. Maybe it's just me but something about small incremental betterment was uncredibly unsexy to me. I would rationalize voting as "participating in the system" that was rigged anyways.
Somehow it changed after I watched CGP Greg's "rules for rulers" videos
Cinnamon is indeed great ! Looks great out of the box and easy to configure quickly. I generally have to set a bunch of options and set up two shortcuts and I can do that under a minute. I think it deserves more praise. GNOME is too limited and I get lost in KDE, cosmic does not support gestures yet... I always come back to it.
I have never seen the second version. Apparently it's there since bash 3.00 (2004). Maybe took inspiration from zsh who also has (or a common ancestor ?)
Somehow it changed after I watched CGP Greg's "rules for rulers" videos
reply