I’ve recently acquired a 3-year-old Toshiba Satellite with a core I3 (running @ 2.4mHz) with 8GB of RAM and installed ubuntu on it. Coming from my windows machine I found ubuntu a refreshing and pleasantly fast OS.
Once I got a few GNOME themes, installed VScode and updated python I was on my way to start using it either as a second screen (for documentation, etc) or as a code interpreter. Due to an unfortunate set of events (which can be described by two words “Windows Update”), I was forced to use it as the main PC which, not at all to my surprise, (based on my previous experience) wasn’t a pain. The only downside I that I had to get a custom build of GitHub Desktop for Linux but that only took up a few moments. It's amazing how snappy and responsive this 3-year-old machine feels, aided by that 8GB of RAM.
Unsurprisingly it was faster than my main windows machine, the terminal was so fast (comparing to the speed that I was accustomed to on my windows machine) that I couldn’t believe my eyes. When windows finished updating (It might have been a few months, or years) I left the ubuntu machine and returned to cumbersome old windows.