and If, I must use lots of free and perhaps sometimes paid software on cool UI and don’t mind a little bit of size, Ubuntu is my preferred choice. My personal opinion is, If I intend to use Linux for mostly free apps on a lightweight/fast UI, I would pick Debian 10.

All Linux options like Debian 10 (buster) or Ubuntu are great. Now, chose VM type you want to pick (#6a or #6b or #6c). and I assume, you will not use this VM as data storage (Google/Cloud drive are more suitable for your data storage purpose) #6. (My personal opinion is 12–15GB so that you can accommodate most of development tools like Android Studio, Anaconda etc.), if not 10GB is enough. Please change boot disk type according to the size as per your need. ( My personal favorite is the one with ~8GB RAM) #5. Pick a machine type depending on your computing need.

and zone (#3) you want this machine to host.

Then, go to Browse to Computer Engine -> VM Instances -> New VM Instance Before you begin Make sure that billing is enabled for your Google Cloud Platform project.

Debian 10 buster download