Y'all laugh but I'm getting into Linux and dusted off an old i7 laptop with 16gb of RAM. Slapped a $40 512GB ssd and linux mint on it to get into [email protected]!
"Old laptop" has a Core 2 Duo and 4GB of DDR2 RAM.
It also has a better keyboard with plenty of travel, on-the-go replaceable battery, easily accessible components likely to get replaced/upgraded/cleaned, large cooler, large selection of I/O, has higher likelihood to survive 2 more years than a brand new laptop and it can be used as a weapon or anchor.
Yes, but requirements for a general use computer have barely changed in the past 10 years. Well, the only thing changing them is Windows 11.
I've used a 2007 mid-range (?) laptop up until it broke in early 2023. Core 2 Duo T7100 (later upgraded to T7500 bought on AliExpress for €1), 4GB of DDR2 RAM, GeForce 8600M GT, cheap 128GB SATA SSD (also from AliExpress). Perfectly usable with Linux Mint. For fun I put Windows 11 on it with Superfetch and BITS services disabled. Perfectly usable with that as well. The only game I tried on it was Asphalt 8 though, but it ran smoothly.
I want to get something like that again, but with support for more RAM. 4GB was the maximum.
My current laptop is an i7 with 16 GB of RAM. Hardware requirements have plateaued pretty hard unless your trying to run something that requires the latest GPU.