I already know that I won’t be able to use apt,

... You can. Could hijack it with Bedrock Linux, and brl fetch <any distros using apt> or import . Of, if that's too non-trivial a system change, perhaps just Distrobox? It'd let you use apt too right? (I don't know, I've never used Distrobox since I already use Bedrock). Or could go really wild, and make it like PCLinuxOS, and have apt handle your rpms. Or just alias the commands to make it familiar.