Re the web browsers I think you’re right. You may get away with a more lightweight browser like SeaMonkey or Falkon, maybe like 1 tab of Chromium lol

Distros I’d try on that would be Linux Mint Debian Edition, Debian w/ lightweight DE like LXDE or Xfce, or Arch Linux 32 if you really want to make it minimalist. Gentoo if you’re very adventurous but with my EEE PC I found compile times took up to days.

Seconding LMDE, been on it for a year on my study laptop. Literally never ever had a problem so far, and being an “out of box” distro there’s minimal work needed to daily drive.

Working at a computer shop, Lenovo ThinkPads are usually pretty fine, but the main fault we’ve seen with them is lack or completely missing thermal compound. On one occasion I saw my colleague’s machine not post, and IIRC we had to reset the CMOS to get it back up.

Don’t be so certain - I’d recommend Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC IoT over Windows 11 any day

I don’t think it is right? The environment looks completely different and the one in the post is 12", which the 11"8 (or now 12"4) never was.

God the school’s response is so sleazy and unapologetic