Legit, it's the way to go. Even with the memory fuckery ongoing, you can pick up decent used ThinkPads all day long for way less than anything else. They won't be great gaming platforms, but you can do some gaming on them.

Pick any of the most recommended "distros" you want to try, make thumb drives that can boot them, and you don't even have to install any until after you've seen that they can handle your needs.

Me? I'm a mint guy. Next to zero chance of it not working on anything I want it to, easy to use and a good package repository. PopOs is good, Ubuntu is okay. And there's a good handful of other solid, noob friendly ones out there.