Oddbean new post about login | logout Regular Linux distros Linux Debian and fedora are too heavy for that hardware, you must try something like antix, artix etc.
there is lightweight versions of many others too, like manjaro and zorin, mainly they just use xfce or cinnamon or mate the core system has never been that heavy that even 1gb memory is not enough, but you kinda need 4gb, and a spinning HDD is gonna be painful
3 years ago I upgraded from 2 GB Ram to 4 GB. I'll add SSD Hard
yeah, SSD will help a lot... it should be a usable system... i had a similar Vaio about 5 years ago, it was nice... my recommendation is to run Cinnamon tho, it's a little heavier than xfce/lxde but it's way prettier, especially with the adapta-gtk-theme installed