@angelastella i would like to use the touchscreen i paid for
Yeah, I have some context now. RYO looks better by the minute.
In the past, I've used customized IceWM or Fluxbox for 640x480 screens, but switched over to all XFCE4 all the time long ago so I don't know how suitable they are now.
Two things you can do to tweak XFCE4 is to move the panel to the left (or right) edge, and to reduce the size of the default font. I'm not sure if this will be quite enough.
A problem with IceWM is that it doesn't have vertical taskbar - only horizontal. The vertical taskbar of XFCE4 is actually a killer feature.
@mavica_again
480 lines? Not that I know. I'd go full TUI. It can be done.