A lot of the non-GNOME GTK desktops have elected to stick with GTK3. They even maintain a suite of applications (Xapps) that many of them share.
GTK 4 and higher are increasingly GNOME only (not that you cannot run them elsewhere—they just won’t fit in).
Arcan is a cool idea but you mostly hear about it from people complaining that Wayland is not ready. Of course, Wayland is already used by more than half of Linux users and Arcan does not really exist yet.
By the time GTK5 appears, a vanishingly small percentage of Linux users will need X11.
I run Wayland on 2009 hardware now.
As toolkits abandon X11, it is going to pressure other operating systems to move to Wayland as well.
FreeBSD is already moving. Even Haiku has Wayland support. So we are talking about the smaller BSDs and the Solaris derivatives. Or ancient operating systems on original hardware I guess. In which case, they can run the older apps which is likely all they can run anyway.
Worst, worst case, you can run Wayland on x11. If there is something you absolutely need, I guess you can run Wayland apps on x11 that way.
How so?
32 bit pointers take up half as much RAM as 64 bit pointers. A complicated application like a web browser consumes much more memory as a 64 bit app than it does as a 32 bit app. That is true of most programs but you are really going to notice it in both desktop environment and your web browser.
You would be amazed how much 32 bit helps. If you do not open too many tabs, the web should be fine. Video no problem ( at reasonable resolutions).
Q4OS with Trinity is a great pick for this user. Alpine is great but MUSL may cause problems. And I say this as a MUSL use (Chimera Linux). You are not going to find 32 but Flatpaks and Distrobox may be too complicated. So, I would stay away from MUSL based distros with 32 bit Linux on a 2 GB system.
MX and Antix are also Debian based and have 32 bit versions.
A 32 bit distro will make a BIG difference with that much RAM.
Run a 32 bit distro. It is the only thing that will run well on 2 GB of RAM. It will run better than you think.
Q4OS, Antix, MX Linux, Damn Small Linux, and even pure 32 bit Debian are decent candidates. If you use Q4, give the Trinity desktop a shot.
I like Andelie Linux as well but MUSL may cause problems for an unsophisticated user.
I use Arch and Debian. More issues on Debian for sure. Both have way fewer problems than Ubuntu. The myths around this really bug me.