this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2026
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I have a laptop with 4 GB of RAM that I'd like to use for occasional comic book reading. (It's a touch screen 2-in-1 laptop that folds over into a tablet configuration.) I use Bazzite on my main PC and I love how low maintenance it is. Are there any immutable/atomic distros that featue XFCE, LXDE, or some other low RAM friendly desktop? Or, should I just layer XFCE or LXDE on top of UBlue Core or make my own image or something? Thanks!

EDIT: Thanks everyone for the feedback and quality discussion! It looks like the best options for immutable have a learning curve or time commitment attached (e.g. NixOS). For a daily driver computer it might be worth the trouble to learn, but in this case I decided to just go with standard Fedora XFCE for now.

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[–] hirihit640@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I'd argue nix does handle operations more gracefully than rpm-ostree/bootc on average, though.

What do you mean by this? Did rpm-ostree break something?

[–] throwaway403@programming.dev 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Sorry, perhaps I should have been more clear.

It was meant strictly in the sense of how much it burdens the system performance-wise. So, in other words, using nix is easier on your system's resources than rpm-ostree (or bootc) is; at least, that has been my experience.

In regards to breaking, I'm not sure whether one outdoes the other. Though, I suppose that nix -by design- would inch this out. But this is basically an 'internal dispute' between the crème de la crème; as rpm-ostree/bootc basically outdoes any other distro package manager that's not named nix or guix.

[–] hirihit640@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 day ago

Fair enough, I never bothered to do any perf benchmarking myself. It's as you said, at that level, it just comes down to personal preference