So I've got myself in a bit of a dillema. I got this HP Stream laptop that's only got 30 gigs of storage, and I want to use it for work. I already bought a 64 gig SD card that I have for storing encrypted files, but even with that the storage on my eMMC runs full. I'm currently running Manjaro Linux Xfce minimal, I use brave as my browser, xfce and awesome as des, nextcloud and megasync, kate, minecraft, teeworlds, xonotic, libreoffice, and other mesc. stuff. An easy solution would be to just uninstall software, but I would like to use this software, I actually use a lot more I'm already going as minimal as I can.

Basically, what is the best setup for storage on a 30 gig storage device? I'm talking distro, file system, de, kernels,live compression, whatever. All I want is something I can program, access the internet, has good second-monitor support, and play some games on. Your thoughts?

You could run an even "lighter" distro on it, but even then, games aren't generally light on drive space. One solution might be to buy a bigger SD card and use that for your games, with the operating system and any programs that aren't games installed on the internal eMMC drive. I think maybe the biggest problem you'll have will be space for whatever games you want to run on it, and whatever you want to have on your home directory.

You could try something like antiX on it. Another solution might be to use a live system with persistence enabled.

My Chromebook only has 16GB eMMC, for which I mainly just use on the internet, & have AntiX installed on it, (also works well using MX Linux).

For external storage, I suggest pendrives, or external HDD/SSD.

https://antixlinux.com/
https://mxlinux.org/

For an OS only 30G is a HUGE amount of storage. I second the advice to use outboard storage (USB connected or SD) for storage space or working storage and reserve the eMMC for OS and related storage.

Base installation of most major distros run something like 16G so adding a bit to that for some programs shouldn't get you 30G too fast but we all end up with a lot of junk.

There may also be ways to use some of the advanced disk schemes like zfs, btrfs, or LVM to add to base amount with any amount of external or network storage.

It is possible to save some space if you compressed the file system. Some allow compression on install. The type of data you have may affect the compression choice.

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30GB should be enough for most versions of linux. Particularly if you don't have GNOME or KDE installed. Move your games and media content (and wine if you use it) to the external sd. Also, you could make sure you delete any leftover kernel installations you aren't using. You might also be able to uninstall all kernel sources if you are not compiling custom drivers or doing kernel development. Also, check /tmp to see if any useless cruft has accumulated there.

Running Mageia LXDE on a 16GB emmc ex-Chromebook (Acer-C730)

with a terminal and 6 FF tabs open, free -m gives total=1907 used=1103 free=389 available=614 - has shared intel video etc.
swap=2297 used =119.

OOTB has 59 user applications installed, but I have never used a large swathe of them.

gparted reports 3.62g used of 12.16GB / partition, with /efi, /swap & / partitions.

if i want to dual desktop this machine, adding plasma DE would take up an extra 1.4GB disk space
would still leave ~6GB free disk space.

Installed RAM is a limiting factor.

does have a SDcard port, but I have yet to need it for permanent storage.

I run the latest Ubuntu Mate on my Stream 11 (N2840 2GB RAM, 16 GB eMMC) and Fedora Mate on my Stream 14 (N4000, 4GB RAM, 32GB eMMC) with 64GB SD cards in the slots. Probably not the lightest of distros, but light enough for my needs

30GB is good space for many distro!
I use distro on USB, it is much smaller.