The project is a good ‘ol fashioned bloggy blog. It will have a running list of posts on the front page, posts will have a simple landing page, and every page (front page too!) will have the same masthead, sidebar, and footer. The focus is on writing with the occasional accompanying photo.
[Twenty Seventeen](https://wordpress.org/themes/twentyseventeen/) is pretty much exactly what I’m after. It’s old, but it looks like it continues to get updates… as recently as a month ago!I’m attracted to the official WordPress themes because of their stability, best practices, and commitment to keeping them updated. Even the ancient [Twenty Ten](https://wordpress.org/themes/twentyten/) theme seems to get regular updates.
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Also, just out of curiosity, was there ever an official Twenty Eighteen theme? Doesn’t seem to exist.
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As long as it’s getting it’s updateds, that’s perfectly fine but I’d highly suggest installing 2024 on a “playground” site and get used to of it. You can even make it look exactly like 2017.
It’s absolutely fine to use older “reference” WordPress themes like TwentySeventeen. Some much older non-“reference” themes may be out of date but as you say, TwentySeventeen and even TwentyTen are routinely updated for compatibility.
So go for it, especially since, as you say, it’s pretty much exactly what you’re after.
The good news about older, non-“Gutenberg” themes is they’re almost completely interchangeable, so if you change your mind later you can switch to a different “classic” theme and you’ll only need to tweak the logo, menu, widgets, and maybe colors and fonts.
Theme interchangeability is what (was?) one of the coolest things about WordPress.