Linux is Linux and you will be running the same or similar apps on most distros. One of them isn’t magically going to use less RAM. That’s dictated by the apps you run and the kernel’s memory management. Hell, you want to use RAM. It makes things faster and it’s doing nothing sitting there unused.

Just find something you like and stop worrying about it. Endeavour is a fine distro. If you want something a little more minimal then go with Arch. Fedora works too.

You could even use Ubuntu. For all the shit it gets for being a noob distro, there’s nothing really wrong with it. There’s this ridiculous notion that you’re supposed to start there and then move to a more advanced distro. They are all packaging similar software and have a convenient package manager. Unless you have a specific use case, there’s less difference than you think.

I can't think of an arch base that does not require fiddling of some sort. In a similar way, desktop Linux is more or less the enthusiast OS. You are kind of like the car person of computing. You do need to be comfortable with messing around with the system to get what you want.

I can think of a few nin-arch bases that require much less messing around with, but they are more "boring" than arch. I use Mint with auto updates and time shift backup. It doesn't get more boring than X11 on a stable Ubuntu core. Flatpak install OBS and steam and set your computing on cruise control.

If you demand more excitement that a decades old DE Pop_OS shares a similar stability with some newer trimming. I also had a lot of success with Nobara if you want a non-Ubuntu core and desire something slightly with a little more pizazz.

Everything you described won't necessarily be done better in other distros.

nothing against endeavour, it is a fine distro and it eventually got me to dip my toes into arch further;

but the arch installer is all you need.

My recommendation is Fedora Silverblue, or to be specific, uBlue. SB is already great, but uBlue ships with some better QOL-defaults. It's not a fork of SB tho, it's just a project for custom images.
You can rebase anytime you want to a SteamOS-clone, KDE spin, and so on, with one command and without any traces.

Why? Here are my reasons for you:

stay out of my way (just work), ex: i dont get any notifications i dont want from the system itself and all i need to do is type 3 letters to initiate an update

uBlue is even less.
It updates automatically in the background and creates the new (updated) image for you.
BUT, not similar to Windows, where the OS just decides to shut off your PC randomly.

You can still keep using your PC and don't notice the staged updates at all.
And when you switch on your device the next time, like once a week or so, you automatically use the new image.

requires little ram to actually use (not really needed due to hardware but simply to reduce the pcs noise as much as possible, bonus points if programs generally do the same thing on it)

That's the same on every distro, doesn't matter. SB is very lean though imo, though not as much as Debian or Arch of course, but therefore very comfortable.
Also:

1. Unused RAM is wasted RAM. As long as it doesn't bottleneck you, why care?
2. This is why
3. If you want to keep your PC silent, change the energy profile or install some fan control software/ more silent fans (Noctua f.e.)

Doesnt require too much fiddling (endevouros never needs this generally, when installing something it usually installs everything you need for things to work, i prefer GUIs usually but if its deadsimple commands like yay its fine as well)

Silverblue "just works" OOTB. It is very user friendly imo and I basically never open the terminal, only, when I have to install something through Distrobox, which isn't often. But 99% is available as Flatpak in the Software Center.

I game and stream so both would need to be doable as easy as possible (i use obs, when it comes to games i usually do emulation and try to avoid proton)

Again, doesn't matter which distro. Almost everything is available as Flatpak.

Why Silverblue?

• As streamer, you want something to always work reliably. An immutable distro ensures that by atomic updates and perfect reproducibility (less bugs and more secure)
• Easy to use (if you forget how traditional distros work)
• Huge software access: you work with containers all the time, and with Distrobox (pre-installed) you can access the AUR, Debian, and much much morenon the same distro! ^(works on other distros aswell...)
• Almost impossible to break
• Flexible: you can always rebase to another spin or variant with one command and without any trace
• And much more.

I would advice against Arch based distros like Garuda, Endeavor, and so on.

I don't see much reasons to use them and due to their nature, they might be not as reliable. It would suck if your install breaks before or while streaming... With SB, you can roll back to your old image in just seconds and everything works again, even if you fucked up.

Most stuff you mentioned works on every distro, you don't need Arch for that. If you like it's UI, then go for Kinoite (the SB KDE spin), or, better, uBlue KDE.

I moved from endeavor to nobara and have been liking it so far

I recently hopped to XeroLinux (page). Arch based, KDE already "riced", it has a greeting app that lets you update with literally 1 mouse click, a number (1-4) and the enter key. It's really nice looking, it's fast and it's ready to use. The only thing I added for it to be perfect was bauh app center, to manage flatpaks, packages and appimages (even sanps if you want to).

Garuda Linux is probably what you want. If you need the DE to be customizable, go with KDE. If you prefer stability, choose XFCE, MATE or Cinnamon. GNOME is also available, but they're planning to drop X11 support in favor of Wayland, which is absolutely not ready for general adoption.

Garuda is Arch-based, most of the applications will be identical. It's also preloaded with gaming-related utilities. Not exactly easy on memory usage, but that's a compromise you'll have to make (KDE uses more RAM than all other DE options).

I guess you could try an immutable distro (Fedora Silverblue comes to mind) if you want something that just works and you don't want to use it for programming

Sounds like you should try silverblue. Its out of your way and has auto updates. I think vanillaOS is basicly the same too. Immutable seems the way to go for normal users since its so reliable. As long as everything they need is available as a flatpack.

CACHYOS !

I recommend bodhi linux. I was looking for something similar to arch and i think this is a good alternative. I have been using it for about 3 years now and had no serious issues. They recently updated to 7.0 and now the packages are much more up to date.

It is based on ubuntu 22.04 and uses apt as a package manager. I find installing nix package manager alongside it can help get any packages it doesnt have, but i havent really had much issue with that since moving to 7.0

Its designed to run on old hardware, and i can vouch it works fine on a system with 2gb ram so it will not use much resources.

It comes with thunar as manager and terminology as terminal. I have also used pcmanfm and mate terminal on the system and they work fine as well.

It uses moksha desktop environment which is a fork of enlightenment but i have also used lxde on it as well and switching was not hard.

I dont really game on it since it is on low end hardware but it should have no problem with retroarch on a more powerful system.

It has synaptic package manager for gui installs but tbh i haven't really used it since i use cli for that. You shouldn't have any trouble installing flatpak on it as well. And you should be able to use obs on it (tho i haven't tried)

I would say this distro should do most of what you want extremely lightweight and mostly out of the way (don't really get notifications on it).

It requires a bit of tinkering at first because it is minimalist and only ships with the minimum required packages but this gives the option to put the packages only you want on there. But once you're set up you really won't have to change anything