Note that I'm not that knowledgable. That's an decent laptop from 2011. You could run cinnamon, but I think you want MATE or even XFCE. You can install cinnamon and if you want more performance then switch to MATE. Cinnamon to MATE is a big improvement, MATE to XFCE a little more. Switching again may sound insane but most of the work is in backing everything up and then setting up programs, so you can try cinnamon for a week or two (without perfecting everything) and see if you want a lighter OS. Don't worry it's really easy the second time once you know how to do it (and mint has all the verification stuff built in).

(PS The other guys celeron is actually better.)

I'm running Fedora Cinnamon with Celeron N95, 8 gigs of shared memory, and Intel HD graphics with a little mini desktop. Runs fine. You have a better processor and if you have 8gigs of memory, you should be more than fine for office needs, web browsing, and light gaming to get your feet wet. Heavy coding or gaming might be a bit of a stretch with your ThinkPad though. I find heavier CAD sessions can be a heavy chore if the renderings get hard, like modeling threads or even moderate assemblies.

Looking at the specs, I would guess it is

You can setup a Ventoy USB stick if you want to try multiple options