App Size vs Load Time Compromise

It's almost definitely due to the lack of memory. EXE and DLL files compressed with UPX compression to save space must be decompressed in memory before being loaded. Libreoffice Portable has 133MB of DLL files within it. Only those over 1MB are compressed to save time with poor performing antiviruses. But there are DLL files as large as 17MB in there.

That 1GB of RAM in the Stream 7 is mostly used by Windows and related processes, leaving basically nothing to run apps. My Stream 7 with Windows 10 generally sits at around 70-75% of RAM used with no apps running. So, running an app like LibreOffice, you wind up with an already large app, adding the memory overhead of UPX - negligible on any standard machine, but not in this case - and then you add in the Windows Defender overhead... and you wind up swapping out to disk constantly because memory is full.

Using portable apps does help keep things off the small 32GB internal drive, but the compressed ones will run slower due to running out of memory. One option is to uncompress our larger apps that are compressed, as we are here. Another option is to get a speedier microSD and use that for your media and a few larger apps for local installs. It will be slower than your internal memory, but fast enough for movies, music, pictures, and apps that you use less often. The Sandisk Extreme Pro is probably the fastest on the market at present, goes for about $50 for 64GB, and achieves numbers like this (taken from a couple Amazon reviews):

Sequential Read : 95.325 MB/s
Sequential Write : 90.660 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 89.314 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 75.971 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 7.492 MB/s [ 1829.0 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 2.441 MB/s [ 595.9 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 7.472 MB/s [ 1824.3 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 2.380 MB/s [ 581.0 IOPS]

You could also consider a different machine. I bought my Stream 7 to test out touch Windows programming on but found it lacking in terms of performance. I recently picked up a refurbished ASUS T100TAF 10" Windows 2-in-1 for $109 after rebate to serve that purpose better. It's got a similar processer (within about 10% performance), same resolution, not terribly bigger size/weight, but it has 2GB of RAM and a removable keyboard/dock and works pretty well with Windows 10 on it (comes with Windows 8.1). They're sold out at the moment, but I found the deal from a thread on SlickDeals similar to this one. And they've popped up multiple times in the past few weeks, so if this would be a good fit for you needs/budget wise, it's something to consider.

Obviously, you know your budget and needs best, but I wanted to give you a few options that may work for you even if it may not involve using our software. From personal experience, I'd steer folks away from a Windows machine with 1GB if they were hoping to run regular apps on it. While Windows 8.1 and 10 are lighter weight and do a better job running in that footprint than Windows 7 and 8, it's still geared more towards tablet and the touch apps than to traditional desktop apps and acting as a laptop.

Hope that helps a bit.