I have an unused Windows tablet from 2021 running some Core M processor or other that I want to put Linux on and start using again. It doesn’t have a keyboard so I would have to actually use it as a tablet and not a laptop. Is there a distro built around one of the mobile desktop environments that also runs well on x86? (Last time I tried Linux mobile it was pretty much only for ARM and I never got it to work well on even an x86 virtual machine.) Or is regular GNOME deskrop still my best bet for a tablet?
You could also try the experimental GNOME Mobile or phosh, but those seem mostly aimed at phones instead of tablets.
Phosh is used quiet a bit on tablets. E.g. Purism ships it e.g. for their Librem 11 and also Juno uses it. We have a
phosh-tablet
for that use case in Debian.