With those specs I wouldn't use it for anything other than a display for something, maybe a picture frame but more realistically I'd probably just take it straight to the recycling center.

What is the cpu? If something, zswap (250mb) with lz4 and zram (2gb on disk) with lz4 too, on a lightweight distro on btrfs with lzo compression might make it usable. Disk compression might make it usable on the disk side and memory compression might make it run at least not extremely bad on the cpu side. Maybe cachyos with gnome (i know, but it is the only DE with good touchscreen) can be at least usable.

If more things, I can try to help. I have a linux tablet.

Edit: Maybe more space (external sd card with btrfs and lzo) could be used as /home too, but only with more information given, what is the setup?

Edit: My config that I made it work and run decently:

Touchscreen is a DE input function. Try KDE or Gnome, or just give up.

I used to have an iMac that I loved (screen was excellent) but it quickly became a shitbox (because Apple) so I turned it into a X Server for my far more powerful Linux box. Is there a modern equivalent of that? Basically turn it into a thin client?

Edit: for kiosks, Windows 10 can be quite happy on 1GB RAM, but that 16GB storage is a problem.

Gnome is probably best with touchscreen, KDE kinda works but is getting better. I've had limited success with Deepin and Cinnamon. I wouldn't bother trying with XFCE, they have no time to make something as low-demand as that work.