I've tried Mint on a live CD and it comes way too bloated for my taste, too many media related software that I don't need for this purpose. A basic text editor, a spreadsheet editor, and basic dependencies to compile Bitcoin Core as well as Tor should be it. Im either going to use Xubuntu or try the latest Debian release.
I just tried installing Linux Mint on VM and amount of the bloat isn't as bad i expected. But since it's too bloated, your option is limited to Debian or manually uninstall the bloat. And i expect Xubuntu has many bloat for you needs since the ISO alone has size 2.8GB.
I've tried Mint on a live CD and it comes way too bloated for my taste, too many media related software that I don't need for this purpose. A basic text editor, a spreadsheet editor, and basic dependencies to compile Bitcoin Core as well as Tor should be it. Im either going to use Xubuntu or try the latest Debian release. Seems pretty easy to install nowadays compared to back then. Does anyone here use that distro at all? It comes with a full disk encryption setting on the wizard.
I'll try automatic partition setting and just encrypt the whole thing. Im not sure if it encrypts the boot partition too, but I want it to encrypt for sure swap and home. Some people don't realize these may remain unencrypted and leak your data on there.
In that case, use Debian and then replace the default GNOME desktop with an XFCE desktop.
I don't recall Debian has default DE since you need to chose the DE either when choosing ISO or during installation. Is that no longer true?