Did it currently have windows installed? If so, have you turned off secure boot and fastboot?
If you've done all that already, then maybe try adding nomodeset to the kernel parameters in grub. You can find instructions by searching how to set kernel parameters. It's fairly easy, but kind of a pain to explain.
Seems a little on the nose.
Broken clock and all that
Evenly spaced and no more than 4 feet away.
I wouldn’t mind there being a whole community devoted to pointing out shit that is poorly designed or just broken
But isn't that every linux forum?
Yep, I've got a stack of 5-10 year old optiplexes (optiplexi?) running proxmox.
In the US, many public universities allow access to the public, including use of computer terminals that will allow access to paid databases. In many cases, you could bring in a usb stick and save copies of articles downloaded from such databases, or at worst you could pay a small fee to print some stuff out. AFAIK, that kind of access varies state by state though, so you need to call university libraries near you to find out.
You say this machine is headless. Is it at a remote location? If not, is it feasible to connect it to a monitor an keyboard for a few minutes? If so then you could logout, switch DE, and then log back in. That would hopefully set the DE you prefer as user default.
If that's not possible, then some of the solutions discussed here might be applicable.
Who but Caravaggio can make a fruit still-life look menacing?
"Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal... says he is still happy with his investment." Cool, cool.
Do some searches on "kiosk" software. That's the general term of art for machines that are intended to run a single program/interface. As for distros, you'll want something light and easy to maintain, ideally with automatic updates. Debian's an obvious pick. Alpine could be great for something like this. Gentoo could be awesome too, but there's a serious learning curve involved.