I don’t believe it will work. To do so it requires to maintain their own repository of RPM specs for a stable release distro. In this case Alma will became an active independent distro downstream to Fedora and CentOS Stream, and could steal the focus from RHEL. I don’t think RH will allow that. Not to say I requires significant effort and Alma is a small community funded project. It’s to good to be true and I have skepticism about the positive attitude of the blog post.
I guess RH tries to “embrace” Alma and Rocky as it was with CentOS.
I don't think this will be viable for the people who really are looking for direct RHEL compatibility, but lots of people like me just use the basic structure of RHEL because we're familiar with the config locations and tooling, and we like the stability over time. If Alma can replicate that aspect then it's still good for me even if they're not bug for bug compatible. Rocky still seem to be going for 100% compatibility and I think that will be harder to maintain over time if RedHat actively fight it.
Go with XFCE, it is perfect to start from. You will get a feeling for linux in a fairly intuitive environment. Then you can easily move on to other stuff if you want to. You can install multiple DEs/WMs and choose which one you want from the log in screen. You can install as many as you have disk space for.
One thing to know about the concept of "customization" in linux. It is on a whole other level than you may be thinking of. On linux when people say something is customizable, especially when you start reading phrases like "infinitely customizable" what it might means is that you must configure it to even open it. And to do that you will first have to spend a bunch of time learning about the application's conventions, history, weirdsies, development environment, etc. You may also have to understand and be able to manipulate the underlying system architecture.
It's fun to do once you reach the basic required skills, if you are interested in that kind of thing. but you can only learn so many things at a time, so set yourself up for success by starting easy. You can move on to a more complex situation at any time you are ready for it. Like imagine learning to drive in a place you've never been with totally different traffic laws than you are used to, and also it's on the moon so gravity don't work as expected. Better learn to drive in an empty parking lot close to where you live.
First thing is make sure linux will run at all on your computer. You can install it, boot it, shut it down, connect to the internet, play audio, make a backup, un/install applications, and other simple tasks. Just go path of least resistance. Don't try to find the perfect set up. Just try something out.
SSD ASAP
Make a separate /home/ partition when you install --- this will keep your actual files (documents, user configurations) safe(r) from screw-ups
Find a way to make regular backups of your user and system configuration files, keeping past versions in case you screw something up but don't realize it right away
The dsektop environment really doesn't have anything to do with it. That's up to the video drivers and display server, be it X11 or Wayland. I haven't any idea which desktop might offer you the best tools for configuring those things though. Just as a rough guess, I'd guess KDE Plasma, perhaps XFCE?
A living proof how typing a full, punctuated sentence and then pressing enter without reading the warning prompt after getting an error from the GUI store can be dangerous. So don't do drugs kids.
I very recently (like last week!) stuck a new drive in my PC to run Pop!_OS, with the aim of switching over from Windows entirely if it pans out. So far I've only tested Steam for games, but it's worked flawlessly for the games I've tried using Proton.
I've had a Steam Deck for some time which convinced me to make the jump. My desktop was my only Windows machine and I'd love to properly switch it to Linux.
I am currently running KDE Neon 5.27 which is Ubuntu based, on an Inspiron 3551 with an Intel N3540 @ 2.16GHz which is a 4 core Atom,
and 4 GiB of RAM. With this 1 tab of Firefox open, the system is using 2GB of the RAM. I have had no issues running Neon on such a slow system with little RAM, but I don't usually have many tabs or programs running at the same time. Pretty much all the desktop interfaces for Linux run with far less resources and bloat than Windows, I would start by finding which desktop environment you prefer. I have been a fan of KDE for many years now, but try different bootable distros to get a feel for which interface you would like.
For a desktop environment, I suggest xfce or lxde. They're very lightweight. As for the distro, all the ones you mentioned are Ubuntu-based. Even though there are some lightweight Ubuntu-based distros, like Zorin and Bodhi, you can do better. I'd suggest going for something lighter, such as the Arch-based EndeavourOS (xcfe is the default DE so it's very well-supported).
Now, if you want something even more lightweight that's still Debian-based like Ubuntu, Mint et al., take a look at BunsenLabs Linux. It's blazing fast, extremely light and very user-friendly. It doesn't use a traditional desktop environment. Instead, it uses the Openbox window manager, which requires much less resources - especially RAM, which seems like it'll be the bottleneck on your laptop.
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