I run a minimal install of Ubuntu 24.04 LTS on my desktop with a Ryzen 5600GT (6C12T; 4700MHz); 32GB DDR4 and 512GB nvme-SSD. I run 4 main VBox VMs; Xubuntu 24.04 LTS; Ubuntu 16.04 ESM; Windows XP and Windows 11 Pro. Note that all VM files are copied from my desktop to my laptop 
On holiday in Belgium I run the same SW configuration on my HP Elitebook 8460p from Dec 2011 with an I5-2520M (2C4T; 3200MHz); 8GB DDR3 and a 2TB HDD supported by a 64GB OpenZFS cache drive; an USB stick with a throughput of 150MB/s.
Iām impressed with banking; email; whatsapp; youtube; WMP 11; etc in the VMs, it works fine. The Linux updates did take considerably more time than on the desktop, but the Windows 11 update did take hours, but it worked on the ancient I5 after I completely optimized on memory. After the holidays I will copy back all my laptop VMs updates to the desktop using the OpenZFS snapshot send/receive feature.
In general I can only run 1 VM, only the 768 MB Win XP VM can be run in parallel with a Linux VM to play my wma music during the Linux upgrades. The music I copied in 2005 from my CDs and LPs.
Lessons: I have a 14" screen and next time I buy at least 15.6". I have to upgrade to 16GB of memory, also to increase the L1ARC ZFS memory cache from the current max 1.5 GB to 4GB.