Yeah, best combo for me too
Syrup
Same for me, XFCE is light, stable and efficient. I believe that's the reason it's chosen for Debian as default DE
According to their Wiki, other Distros (including DE) are not supported/documented and if you do it's at your own risk. Personally, I wouldn't dare trying that.
Dell provides XPS laptop with Ubuntu on it. It works great and Ubuntu can be replaced with other distro ( I did successfully tested Mint and now Debian 11)
Works OK but makes your connection slow as hell... Not really useful for daily usage.
I don't think so, mostly it's hardening, and few security related software, all FOSS
But you'll need much more RAM, 8 GB is a bare minimum...
The kicksecure documentation is well written. Go here for distro-morphing of Debian 12, step by step things to do are pretty explicit and you can even copy the command lines if you think you'll make a mistake...
You have a link?
This is the best choice IMHO. You have a rock solid OS (Debian) and all possible taken measures to harden it with Kicksecure patch.
Right, but still quite affordable compared to similar solution with Proton IMHO