It's a contemporary 4 core processor. It can run anything.
Heck, my 8gig 2010 MacBook with a core duo runs gnome on Debian without any issues.
I've run Mint without any issues on machines with far weaker processors. I don't think the hardware is the issue here.
Sounds like a good time to test out a new distro 💜
Absolutely.
I run LMDE on my N100 mini-pc that I use as a server. It was super easy to setup
Assuming you mean the Beelink S12 (which is the first thing that comes up in a search for "n100 mini pc"), that's quite similar to my own computer specs, which can run just about any distro, with enough resources to spare for a VM or two. I don't think it's necessary to go really lightweight or pick something special. If there's a distro you're already familiar with and know you can do all of those things on, install that.
If you like Garuda, you could always try a different Arch spin which is lighter out of the box, like CachyOS or EndeavourOS.
It's about as fast as a Haswell desktop, but a fraction of the power usage. It will run any modern OS.
It does have significantly faster hardware video encoding/decoding
Trying out EndeavourOS for now. Everything seems much smoother for now. It was probably just discord ruining the CPUs life lol
Bazzite is tailored for gaming but it's also great overall. With EmuDeck you can turn the whole thing into a steam deck and play ur emulators with a controller.
Anything with XFCE or LXQt desktop? You can try to install that on Garuda/Arch you already have. Or something like Sway, but that might be too awkward from the start.
I would probably suggest something based on LXQT or even XFCE for a device with only an N100 at it's core. That CPU is the bottleneck of the device.
Alpine might be a contender.
Fedora KDE.
Void Linux.
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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