is that because he is running XFCE that your recommending 1GB?
That and the fact that he wrote "no gaming or graphic design" and "a lot of typing things up in LaTeX" (which probably means little LibreOffice). In the end, most of the RAM will be dedicated to web browsing. 1 GB may be too little (if he likes to have tens of tabs opened) but 2 GB already looks like a lot in his situation. And, as I wrote, he could always buy more RAM later if his requirements increase (the price will decrease in the same time).
