Fedora-KDE-Minimal-Install-Guide VS Debian-Xfce4-Minimal-Install

This is one way, but it might be a little outdated.

Fedora Workstation comes with GNOME by default. OTOH the Fedora Everything ISO lets you do a customised install. I recently did a minimal KDE install using this guide for my old laptop.

There is a guide https://github.com/Zer0CoolX/Fedora-KDE-Minimal-Install-Guide for this, but a bit outdated.

This one https://github.com/Zer0CoolX/Fedora-KDE-Minimal-Install-Guide Yeah it's pretty simple to follow, you just need to used the "everything iso" and you get a nice minimal setup, I'm like you though, I just remove what I don't want

Aqui

Check out https://github.com/Zer0CoolX/Fedora-KDE-Minimal-Install-Guide. I have not updated it for a few versions of Fedora but it should give you a foundation to start from.

You can do the same with KDE or Xfce (guide for Debian) with minimal effort involved. All of these will idle very low, usually around 400-500mb. Just use what's comfy to you! :)

If you feel like it, I recommend installing as described here except just download the iso for Debian Bookworm, the stable version. (That guide is for installing Debian Bookworm but it is older, such that it treats Bookworm as the testing version, which it was at the time of writing.)

I installed from the Proxmox ISO, updated sources.list to use pve-non-subscription instead of the enterprise repository, fully updated all packages, THEN did the manual minimal install documented here: https://github.com/coonrad/Debian-Xfce4-Minimal-Install

This might be useful: Debian-Xfce4-Minimal-Install .

Perhaps a Debian net-install with a lightweight desktop environment such as Xfce (or MATE or Lxqt) is what you are looking for. Follow this guide to set up a 'minimal' Debian system with only the bare minimum from Xfce: https://github.com/coonrad/Debian-Xfce4-Minimal-Install

In that case, consider u/kahupaa's suggestion to create a virtual machine of another distribution such as Arch Linux or Debian Sid. This repository is a great resource for setting up a minimal XFCE desktop on Debian.

Debian Xfce4 Minimal Install Guide

You can do the same with KDE or Xfce (guide for Debian) with minimal effort involved. All of these will idle very low, usually around 400-500mb. Just use what's comfy to you! :)