EVERYONE TAKE COVER! HE ASKED IT!

LMDE 7 for this configuration.

depends a lot on your actual hardware. some 2014 computers can run kde just fine, some will struggle with it. what actual components do you have?

I have arch + kde plasma running on a i5 3320m among other things and it's completely fine. Your 4gb ram is not an issue.

The biggest issue around this generation would be if you have a spinning hard drive, you'd want to replace that even with the cheapest used ssd you can find anywhere asap.

Arch is fun and you should try it at some point but it's not "faster" than Debian or mint or whatever, it mostly just comes down to your desktop environment and web browser.

Whatever distro you want, it's Linux so you can do anything you want. Go wild with your imagination.

I'd suggest EndeavourOS with XFce (removing the endeavouros addons after installation to save ram). I can make it boot at 460 MB of RAM. Hyprland uses about 900 MB. Might be of interest with just 4 GB of RAM. For example, on Omarchy, which uses arch/hyprland, it uses about 900 mb of ram, but it's super slow with btrfs and some changes they've made. So on an old PC, XFce might be your friend. XFce can be themed really well, here are my attempts:

macos: https://mastodon.social/@eugenialoli/114009689446895521

macos classic: https://mastodon.social/@eugenialoli/114875117360852977

win11: https://mastodon.social/@eugenialoli/114874435763184758

beos: https://mastodon.social/@eugenialoli/114751365408638345

Void Linux Musl Xfce will run AMAZINGLY. Live boot it in root, otherwise it won't have graphics acceleration (or it may be something else? Either way, I had 2 very different experiences).

I like Debian because it is maintained by a community of volunteers rather than a company. In addition it is a well known distro with an active community that serves as the base for many other distros.

It all depends on how much time and energy you have to configure and maintain your system. If you want a rolling distribution and don't have much time available, I would recommend Tumbleweed because it strikes a good balance between constant updates and operational stability, as it comes configured with snapper, a great tool for restoring the system in case of an update failure. If you have more time available to manage your system, I would try Arch directly because I am not in favour of using distributions that do not have control over their own repositories.

I would say Arch if you are that tight on resources and comfortable doing so (the setup isn't as bad as people make it sound, just look up a guide online), but Endeavour would get you to more or less the same place with much less complexity.

That said, is there any chance of upgrading the RAM? an extra 4GB or 8GB stick of DDR3/DDR3L off ebay would not cost too much, and would make a world of difference for things like modern web browsers.

Hyprland is transphobic

I would go with Arch and i3. Dont use archinstall. Do it the hard way and you will learn alot about linux.