I used such a computer (4GB DDR3 ram and 2 GHz dual core Pentium) for some very basic work tasks on Windows 10 LTSC (the one without the bloat). It had Windows

I used such a computer (4GB DDR3 ram and 2 GHz dual core Pentium) for some very basic work tasks on Windows 10 LTSC (the one without the bloat). It had Windows due to some weird hardware incompatibility, so I used it for about a month. The computer is used for browser with a couple of Google Spreadsheets opened tabs and a couple of messengers once in a while to reply to some messages. It was almost unusable in that very scenario. I could handle a couple of tabs, but once I opened a couple of extra tabs (e.g. some search either through Google or any local shops) it literally hanged. I had to wait for it (to swap, I suppose) for a couple of minutes to unfreeze. I went very angry over time and replaced the weird incompatible with Linux component (GPU) for another one and now it runs Fedora 39 with default Gnome 45 installed. It works perfectly well and it hangs only when I open relatively big number of tabs, 15 to 20, which is a lot for the use-case of that very machine. I thought of optimising the machine to run just swaywm (which eats like 300 MB compared to over 2GB of Gnome), but I never faced any issue for over a 3 months period. So I would confirm that even 4 GB is plenty unless you need a big number of browser tabs opened. But not with Windows. Windows was usable on that machine if you don’t use browser heavily, but very very lightly.