This will be for a physically small i5 laptop for various programming fun. The candidate linux should be easy to install, and provide a large selection of CLI programs.
Arch or derivatives (Manjaro, EndeavourOS) might be up your alley. They may not provide a ton of CLI stuff right out of the gate but there’s lots of funky stuff in the AUR. As far as install goes it’s not as difficult as memes portray and there are scripts that make it simple.
I’m using Void for quite some time, and I’m enjoying it very much.
There’s a version of Debian whose desktop environment is just the CLI. (I learned the “fun way” at first boot whilest helping a friend install Linux on their machine). It was certainly a lightweight, fast, & easy installation, I’ll say that! Lol!
I am running Debian 12 on another machine.
Is MX or antiX in the running?
I believe any Linux can be “CLI Linux” as Linux is designed CLI first. Do you have an end goal? You can either not install a desktop or just stop and disable your display manager
The purpose I have in mind for the system will be a place to code, C, python, and some BASIC if I can find a nice CLI one. I have installed MX linux, and will probably keep the window manager as installed but just use a lot of terminal emulators.
Sounds like a decent setup. Good luck
Well, NixOS is pretty easy to install using their graphical installer and it has one of the largest package repositories. It has basically everything you could need.
Alma being red hat will support pretty much everything. You would still need to install it with yum.