I would advise against 8GB, its really low even for lightweight work. You mention "dev' work: Imagine you have: - few browser tabs - IDE - compilation - may

I would advise against 8GB, its really low even for lightweight work. You mention "dev' work: Imagine you have: - few browser tabs - IDE - compilation - maybe virtual machine or application under test running its very easy to run out of RAM in this scenario, just parsing the source code and providing code completion can hang a pc these days. you can swap to disc but you will be hurting if you buying 8GB is only option make sure the laptop has free RAM slot(s) so you can upgrade later more tips: - forget about GUI, look up i3 - if you can, install arch, or some other distro that lets you manually pick packages, if you go for ubuntu, be prepared to be disabling a lot of services after first install (not a huge pain, you can google how to do it)