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
God the school’s response is so sleazy and unapologetic
Not sure if the current generation still has it, but work issued us techs with ThinkPad L14 Gen 3 laptops and I’ve been happy with it as a work device. It has an RJ-45 (was considered a requirement when they procured the laptops for techs) and mine has a Ryzen 5 Pro 5675U. Only complaints I would have for it is soldered USB-C connectors (which double as the only power source for the machine) and keyboard isn’t as nice as my personal T480 although definitely still fine.
I would caution against the 12th gen Intel i7 ThinkPads, we’ve had multiple internally have overheating issues or stuck in connected standby. My colleague wishes he never replaced his original work issue (same as mine).