how to successfully eliminate system bloat
Apologies for the double post.
You may consider running a
distribution with
XFCE,
Openbox, or
Fluxbox. For Fluxbox, you might consider trying
MX Linux's Fluxbox, as they've done a good job with it. I recommend
Debian for XFCE. For Openbox, well... usually I install & configure that myself, so if you're new I honestly couldn't recommend a distribution with Openbox, though they exist.
Some will recommend using
Linux Mint and that's fine, though I want nothing to do with
Ubuntu so you could try their
Debian Edition. I recommend not choosing Ubuntu because of
snaps and other reasons which I won't get into here. It's just my preference, coming from someone who started using their distribution when they first appeared on the scene and up until they decided to make some alterations I wasn't kosher with.
You really want to run a lightweight
Desktop Environment like XFCE or a
Window Manager like Openbox or Fluxbox with that much memory because when you use things like beefy browsers such as Firefox or Chromium, for example, you're going to need all the memory you can get and not waste it on the desktop like
Gnome or
KDE. Some people recommend the
MATE Desktop Environment, though I have limited experience with it.
People may say KDE has comparable memory usage to XFCE. Each distribution is different and may have different programs and services running so it all depends on the distribution. When you're experienced enough you can take something like Debian minimal and build from there so you know exactly what you're getting.
Depending on the amount of free time you have, you could test Gnome, KDE, XFCE and if you're feeling a little brave a distribution with a Window Manager such as Fluxbox or Openbox. Window Managers can be a little rough on the Linux newbie, but you'll thank me with the amount of memory you'll save when you run modern web browsers or venture into something like gaming.
As you advance you can start looking at the
services loaded for each distribution and disable or remove the ones which you don't need which may be chewing up memory in the background.
As
MikeWalsh recommended, try distributions which have a
LiveCD/
USB option.
Go nuts and have fun!
