Does an Intel Core i3-3217U @ 1.80GHz (quad core, I think) qualify as "2 GHz dual core processor or better"

The minimum system requirements for 18.04 are "2 GHz dual core processor or better"; would a quad-core at 1.8 GHz meet (or approximate) this requirement?

Solution 1:

Your processor has two cores, albeit with four threads: less than 2 GHz clock, and while an effectively quad core at 1.8 GHz will have better overall performance than 2 GHz on older architecture, individual tasks generally run on a single thread, so will be 10% or more slower than the system expects. If Ubuntu will successfully install, it will run with suboptimal performance. Depending how you use your system, you might find performance acceptable, but you might prefer Lubuntu or Xubuntu, which have lower hardware requirements.