My spinning-rust 24” iMac from 2011 mostly manages to trundle along with Linux Mint on it for my partner to use. LibreOffice and Firefox for web browsing, mostly.
Anything more than that and it chokes. Too many tabs, it chokes. Too many software updates, woo boy does she choke. That poor machine!
I replaced the HD on my 2009 24" iMac with an SSD some years ago and upped it from 4GB to 8GB. A great performance boost. Old OS but it still works well for me.
Anything more than that and it chokes. Too many tabs, it chokes. Too many software updates, woo boy does she choke. That poor machine!