ThinkPenguin Penguin Pro 5 question

is that because he is running XFCE that your recommending 1GB?

That and the fact that he wrote "no gaming or graphic design" and "a lot of typing things up in LaTeX" (which probably means little LibreOffice). In the end, most of the RAM will be dedicated to web browsing. 1 GB may be too little (if he likes to have tens of tabs opened) but 2 GB already looks like a lot in his situation. And, as I wrote, he could always buy more RAM later if his requirements increase (the price will decrease in the same time).

Well, right now even the minimum spec with a G3220, 4GB of ram, and a 320GB drive performance is acceptable for most use cases. The main thing that you'd be able to see a big difference in performance with right at this very moment is the hard disk. An SSD is going to have the most dramatic speed impact from day 1. The CPU might be underwealming going forward though, a few years from now. Intel Atom systems from a number of years ago were perfectly fine performance wise with GNOME 2 for most users. However those systems today leave a lot to be desired. However keep in mind that these were $250 systems at the time and the equivalent would probably be Penguin Nano today for $349 (maybe a little better than at the time). That said I'd probably suggest an i3 or i5 and play it safe. A lot though really depends on how much you want to spend and how long you want it to last and at what level you want it to continue to perform at.

I'd probably go with this configuration (I'd probably classify myself as being in the same boat as you for what I need):

Processor: Intel Dual-Core i3-4130 (3M Cache, 3.40 GHz)
Memory: 8GB DDR3
Hard Drive: 500GB SSD Hybrid

But, as others have pointed out even this is going to be fine (I'd anticipate more performance degradation though over time):

Processor: Intel Dual-Core Pentium G3220 (3M Cache, 3.00 GHz)
Memory: 4GB DDR3
Hard Drive: 320GB

Right now my primary work computer is a system with an i5-3210 3rd gen cpu, 8GB ram, and a traditional spinning disk. It seems just fine to me for basic use cases. The i5-3210 is at the lower end of the high end spectrum as far as CPUs are concerned.

I also use a system with a 4th generation 3205U for entertainment purposes. That CPU is at the low end of the spectrum and does have difficulty under pressure with high quality video content- but personally it doesn't bother me. My significant other though does notice that the system has performance difficulties with high end video.

On the other hand a basic Penguin Pocket Wee does perfectly with a mid-range CPU in it even with the higher end video content. The low end CPU in the Penguin Pro 5 is also in the high to mid-range section as far as the CPU is concerned.

Ultimately I don't think you can go too terribly wrong for basic use with the Penguin Pro 5 either way you go. If there were two things I'd upgrade it would be the hard disk for an immediate speed boost, and a ram upgrade to ward off tomorrows application bloat. Followed lastly by a CPU upgrade if I added a third upgrade, in that order.

All upgrading the processor is going to do is make it run faster, and that's not going to significantly affect longevity in terms of being able to run new software. In fact, from my understanding, processor speeds have pretty much stagnated in the past decade or so; speeds still go up, but it's a lot more marginal than it used to be and there's now more of an emphasis on making software more efficient, or in some cases doing things that use a lot of RAM to reduce CPU workload a bit.

By the way, Chris, don't you think the site should say how many cores all the processors have? It seems it's not listed how many cores are on the i3, i5, and i7 processors lately; you have to look them up yourself to find out. Number of cores is usually more relevant to understanding how fast it is than clock rate.