I have a T480 that I'm very happy with. With shipping I paid a little under $250. It came with 16GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD (which I replaced with a larger one).
Mint_Raccoon
I've used KDE on a Thinkpad T60, it's about 17 years old, has 3GB of RAM, and a Core Duo. It ran surprisingly well. Replacing the HDD with a SSD can also make a noticeable difference, so you should consider that if you haven't already. I also turned off a lot of the animations and effects for better performance.
I took a programming class in highschool, so I know some BASIC. Not that I've ever used it since then.
The closest I can offer to what you're asking for is that there are some e-readers that use Android. I own a Boox Page, which is one of those, and I'm happy with it. Boox products are a bit on the pricier side, but they do offer features that can be difficult to find on other manufacturers' offerings, such as a micro SD slot.
My sister uses her second monitor maninly for Discord, but sometimes it's art references or game guides.
There's a homebrew app called ftpd that you could use, but it only works on a hacked system and that requires an SD card reader to initially setup.
It just stops. The story I heard about why was because the author was afraid of dying and leaving it unfinished, so he just stopped and effectively left it unfinished.
My late grandmother's Bichon/Maltese mix would scream at you while you were eating until you either finished or gave her something. My grandmother insisted that she never fed the dog from the table, despite the fact that she gave the dog her leftovers almost every meal.
They've already been mentioned, but The Dead Milkmen are exactly what you're looking for.