Can I use the internet with only 3.5 Gb memory on a Thinkpad laptop?

A friend gave me a Thinkpad T-40S and a wired mouse.

I am going to use it for using the Internet, documents, and some simple games.

I tried Software Updater at the library, but it would have taken around 4 hours.

I will go to my daughters house this afternoon to finish the software update.

It has 3.5 Gb of memory. A search recommended 8 Gb. Can I get by with that much memory?

If Ubuntu MATE is running okay on it, it should be fine for the internet and documents. Gaming... well, it will depend on the games but maybe.

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As long as you have, in my estimation, about 4 times the RAM-resident size of the OS itself (obviously more is better), then you should be able to do anything, internet or anything else, all depending on how much swap you allocate and minimum RAM-resident/locked requirement of various applications.

The less the RAM, the more the need for SWAP.

That is the eternal trade-off. :slight_smile:

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Yes, easily.

I still have my old 'acer swift one' with a Pentium N4200 with 4GB RAM and 128GB SSD. It runs everything I throw at it including video-editing.

I also have a 20 year old ASUS F3T with dual-turion and 3GB RAM which runs Ubuntu-MATE 24.04LTS and although it barely runs youtube videos, it does everything else with ease.

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