Kind of. I’ve been running Xbuntu for four years on a system with 1 gb ram total. Running XFCE, I’m using a little over 500mb of ram at idle. I could probably optimize that. If I switch to i3, I use around somewhere between 300 and 350mb of ram at idle.
Another option: Check out Ubuntu Core if you’re shooting for super-tiny and you are willing to use snaps instead of deb packages… It targets embedded systems, so it is designed to run on 250/500mb of ram depending on which version you pick. I’ve used it on a Pi before and their website indicates that it works on other architectures. It isn’t meant to offer a desktop experience.
I’ve been enjoying rolling releases for several years but I’ve had a long and cordial relationship with point release distros.
For me it comes down to fresh software and personal taste. I like the ‘flow’ of updates that rolling releases have and prefer dealing with small recurring issues over twice-a-year big upgrades. That being typed, I keep an eye on update news to see what potential problems may arise and I’m comfortable dealing with minor breakages as they occur. I know more about troubleshooting than I did when I was younger, so a bit of instability doesn’t ruin my day. Anyhow, a little bit of research is worth my time if it benefits several machines at once.
I still have a few Debian-based machines that I’m keeping as-is due to how difficult initial install was on those particular machines. I don’t have time to re-learn how to change them over and I don’t want to risk getting stuck partway. While the occasional release upgrades are irritating the scope of the irritation is small. If I were starting over they probably would all be on rolling releases as well, but I don’t mind them.
Apparently, yes. I’ve never tried doing that with a live usb, but give it a shot and let me know how it works out for you.
You probably have much better hardware than my old tablet. My tablet was marketed as a $99 dollar Windows tablet and I got what I paid for. 1gb ram soldered to the board, a weak 64-bit atom processor with 32-bit efi. One micro-usb port that doubled as the charging port. It took a powered usb hub, a custom-modified installer, and a lot of patience to get that thing up and running. It still works!
Fedora would be a good starting point since it has a straighforward version of GNOME as its default DE. It would be a wise to try out the fedora live disk for a while to verify that the touchscreen works well before installing anything. If Tails worked on this laptop then Fedora should as well, but it doesn’t hurt to check before doing anything permanent.
System memory and processor speed may be bottlenecks on a touchscreen laptop that old. My 2014 touchscreen tablet runs linux, but it can’t handle GNOME or anything remotely touchscreen-friendly. Onscreen keyboard+tiling wm=awkward user experience.
It’s a ridiculous situation in my household. Our newest computer is a NUC, but it doesn’t have TPM. I only run Windows in a VM on it, but still. Nothing else that I own is even close to capable of running Windows 11. These are all decent computers, performance-wise.
I learned Linux on a whim, but now it’s the only thing saving me from a home-wide hardware refresh at a very inconvenient time. Lesson learned.
The Linux Command Line at https://linuxcommand.org/tlcl.php is a good resource. Well-written and structured in a fairly logical way. The primary focus is on doing things in bash on Linux but it also expands into related topics that aren’t strictly about bash, such as editing text files from the command line, using ssh to connect to remote computers, etc.
Installing an operating system is not a typical part of the computing experience. Buying something that has been pre-built it is the default for the vast majority of users outside of the Linux world.
I don’t personally know a lot of people who have tried installing Linux, but most of the people in that limited group made the mistake of trying to install directly on top of hardware that they hadn’t researched. I am not criticizing that mindset - I have been one of those people on more than one occasion.
Even on ‘successful’ installs, it isn’t uncommon for something to not work without additional steps. To be fair, the same often goes for vanilla Windows installs if you don’t have a bunch of device-specific driver packages ready. No big deal if it turns out to be a fingerprint reader or a webcam that needs a tweak, but a wifi or video card that doesn’t work by default is a huge problem for someone who hasn’t prepared for it.
Nowadays I try to do my research in advance and come to an install project fully prepared, but I’m glad that I don’t have to put an operating system on new, unfamiliar hardware on a regular basis.
This is actually a good first step for anybody who is trying out a new operating system. When I made the switch to MacOS for a few years, I had a checklist of tasks to learn before I pivoted away from Windows. There were ways to accomplish everything, but I had long since forgotten how long it took me to learn how to do things in Windows. For everything that was different, I had to fight muscle memory and a false expectation of simplicity. I had the same problem with BSD and Linux.
A lot of things seem simple because they build on things that we’ve already learned, but if you switch to a new operating system, some of the old building blocks are swapped out with something else. Experience is context-sensitive and simplicity isn’t always as simple as it seems.
Vim is absolutely the right answer. No visual interface at all and easy to customize aesthetically by putting a few lines into .vimrc.
Learning curve: There is one, but it really isn’t that bad. Read a guide first because minimalist is not the same as instinctive. If you learn a bit about modes and specific commands before you get started, Vim is way easier to use than the hype would lead you to believe.
Of course, OP wants something without a lot of features. Vim has tons of features, although none of Vim’s advanced features are noticeable unless you read through :help or learn some extra commands. If you just learn basic navigation, mode-shifting, and HOW TO SAVE/EXIT, then you probably won’t find a more minimalist text editing experience. Except for ed.
I’ve been using Emacs for a few months after several years focused on a Vim workflow. They’re both great! I’ve gone with the vanilla versions of each initially - I figured that I might as well learn the basics before going down the configuration rabbit-hole. To get started with Emacs, I wrote down a list of commands and actions that I do in Vim and build a mirrored list with the Emacs equivalents. There are definitely workflow differences (modal vs nonmodal for starters), but building a baseline fluency with both programs has been a lot of fun.