jeffep

Hard to say without more context. I’d check the existing distributions and pick one that suits you. Their websites usually have lists with compatible devices.

PostmarketOS is interesting for tinkering, grapheneOS just works reliably. Everything else in between

Okay, but why not create more work for yourself by rebuilding everything from scratch?

Can’t believe nobody here mentioned nixOS so far? How about moving all of your configs in a flake and manage all of your systems with it?

Couple it to your smart watch, backup every 10 seconds, and make it vibrate when successful

Recently took the leap to try it out and it’s surprisingly nice. Especially thanks to the automatic rollbacks, in case something breaks. Only took me a few years of getting nagged and learning about it, and multiple attempts at reading through the documentation.

But for a beginner? No way. NixOS has a serious documentation issue. Also the community structure is a big plus in Debian.