Does anyone have any suggestions for a 32-bit distro that's still being updated?
I paid more than 20€ for a Parker pen with refills and it was worse than a 3€ Pilot V5 Hi-Tecpoint (which is my current favourite, I have it in black, red, green, blue and pink colours).
It's just that AI/LLM is in fashion at the moment, but it'll pass as all trends pass. Before it was crypto and "Rewritten in Rust". Trends come and they go.
If you're finding that it's affecting your mental health, it might be better to just take a break, there's a high likelihood that HN will still be here when you return. ^^
The very reason why I bought a Steam Deck is because it is both a handheld and a Linux Desktop.
Regarding your point, do realise that just by being a NH reader, you're in the 1%, not to mention all the other delineations that are commonly attributed to the HN crowd.
We are not the majority.
It's good enough, it gets the job done and does not cause enough friction for the person to feel the need to improve. Complacency.
In addition to Mint and AntiX there is also Slackware (I use xfce rather than KDE) but adding software outside the (large) base install is not an 'apt-get thing' process.
Salix Linux, based on Slackware, does have package repositories with a reasonable selection of applications. Salix is based on the stable Slackware 15.0 so has nicely aged packages.
Void Linux also has an xfce4 based live i686 iso you can look at and decide to install from.