I'm not the one you posed your question towards, but it's related to Bazzite's relation to Fedora Atomic and uBlue.

To put it simply, dnf is the 'source of truth' when it comes to package management (i.e. finding, installing, updating, removing (etc) of packages) on (traditional/regular) Fedora. So, dnf is basically to Fedora what apt used to be to Ubuntu. Sure, you can use Flatpak or any other (additional) package manager. But, there's no need to unless the software you seek is not available for installation through dnf.

Bazzite, on the other hand, does not allow you to install any packages through dnf. Instead, rpm-ostree, flatpak, Toolbx/Distrobox and (exclusive to uBlue projects) brew (and ujust) are provided by default. But, you might have to learn when you'd have to use which and why.

To educate yourself on this, you should definitely consider reading up on the related entry within Bazzite's documentation. In general, there's a lot of very useful stuff in Bazzite's documentation. Therefore, if you intend to use Bazzite, you should definitely read through its documentation.

Consider pulling those through https://www.virustotal.com/

IIRC, any of the uBlue images offer to ship these by default. Hence, they might as well pick one of those instead.

When the laptop is from Framework (like OP's laptop is) and is one of the 'supported' distros, and if said distro has a more robust update scheme (related to its immutability), then, quite frankly, its as close to "tailored to your hardware by a team of qualified and paid engineers" as it gets.

I understand. And to be frank, I agree with you that perhaps it's too much focused on a particular set of things (i.e. gaming).

There's also Aurora and Bluefin (see uBlue's website) for those that seek a very similar experience but without the focused-on-gaming part. The reason I prefer Bazzite over those two is related to Waydroid (i.e. software to run Android (apps) on Linux). However, your mileage may vary.

Finally, uBlue used to dedicate resources and documentation on their base images; i.e. relatively not-opinionated images for Silverblue, Kinoite and Fedora Atomic with basically any desktop environment you could imagine plus hardware enablement. These are perhaps still worth considering. However, personally, I've been having a better time on Aurora/Bazzite/Bluefin.

You seem to be ignorant; the use of this word is not meant derogatory. In all fairness, it's perfectly fine; we all gotta start out somewhere. So, please allow me to elaborate.

Being the first distro on which new technologies are introduced

Consider checking up on where Wayland, systemd, PipeWire, PulseAudio etc first appeared; so on which particular distro.

Also atomic branch?

Fedora Atomic, i.e. the first attempt to Nix'ify an established distro. Most commonly known through Fedora Silverblue or Fedora Kinoite. Peeps formerly referred to these as immutable. However, atomic (i.e. updates either happen or don't; so no in-between state even with power outage) is more descriptive. It's also the most mature attempt. Derivatives like Bazzite are the product of this endeavour. From the OG distros, only openSUSE (with its Aeon) has released an attempt. However, it seems to be less ambitious in scope and vision. I wish it the best, but I find it hard to justify it over Fedora Atomic.

SELinux might be a fair point, but I doubt that ss unique to Fedora tbh.

OOTB, apart from Fedora (Atomic), it's only found on (some) Fedora derivatives and openSUSE Aeon (which forces you to use GNOME and Aeon's specific container-focused workflow). Arch, Gentoo and openSUSE (perhaps even Debian) do 'support' SELinux, but it can be a real hassle do deal with. And it's not OOTB.

If you make claims, you better substantiate it. I just did your homework 😂. Regardless, I'm still interested to hear a distro with more impressive USPs. Let me know 😉.

What's with openSUSE Tumbleweed?

Do you think its USPs are more compelling? If so, consider naming those USPs in order for them to be evaluated.

Uses btrfs by default but comes with no snapshots or GUI manager pre-configured for system restore

False on Fedora Atomic.

Less software availability compared to Ubuntu or Mint

Distrobox and Nix exists.

More likely to break than Ubuntu or Mint

Mint, perhaps. For Ubuntu, this was only true in the past. And only if PPAs were used sparingly. But Snaps have been a disaster for them in this case. So much so, that even Valve told Ubuntu users to use the Flatpak for Steam instead of the Snap.

Until now I used distrobox but I always wondered which distro/ package manager to use. What’s your experience with it?

The answers found below this post resonate with my own experiences.

I do have a question: When you run the sestatus command in the terminal, what string/description is found corresponding to "Current mode"?

Do you mean SecBSD?

But BSDs and Linux are very similar in design philosophy and are dependent on each other.

Interesting. Would you mind elaborating on the bold parts? Thank you in advance :D !

Several posters have argued that LMDE, like debian, is barebones, whereas LM is ideal for an end user with not much idea about linux

I believe I'm the only one in the previous post that used the term. But, I believe a misunderstanding has occurred. Debian, plain old Debian, is (relatively) bare-bones. And with this, I mean that extra tooling and what not is absent. Sure, these extra tooling etc come at the cost of what some might regard as bloat. But, ultimately, its absence should not affect performance in any significant way (so not positively, nor negatively). Thus, LMDE and Linux Mint are actually pretty close to one another. LMDE is basically just Linux Mint (Cinnamon edition) but with a Debian base instead of being based on Ubuntu.

I also want to future proof it as much as possible, which would mean using the OS/DE that uses less resources.

Excellent OP. Thank you for providing this insight on what's important for you. With this information we'll be able to offer better help. So, as you've excellently noticed already, Xfce is pretty good if you want a very functional machine that doesn't suck a lot of resources. So, I totally support your decision for Xfce over Cinnamon as Xfce is simply less resource intensive. However, 8 GB of RAM should be pretty fine. Even GNOME should run wonderfully on 8 GB of RAM, so Cinnamon should not cause any troubles. But, if you've still got concerns and if you're already on an SSD, then continue using Xfce as it's otherwise one of the better DEs out there. But, if you're not on an SSD yet, then consider slipping one inside; it will matter a lot.

Regarding your actual query, installing Xfce in retrospect to LMDE should work, but you might get yourself into more trouble than it's worth. Therefore, I'd advice you to simply get Linux Mint Xfce Edition and call it a day. Going for the Edge ISO (which by default comes with Cinnamon) for the latest (and greatest) kernel and retroactively trying to setup Xfce should (once again) cause you more troubles than it's worth it. So, in the end, I'd like to recommend you either Linux Mint Xfce Edition or MX Linux (which is based on Debian Stable (so not Ubuntu) and actually defaults to Xfce). Honestly, they're mostly two flavors/interpretations that try to accomplish very similar goals. So, you should be fine with either one of the two.