Will Monterey run smoothly on 2010 MacBook Air? (2gb ram)

My sister gave me her old MacBook Air recently. What's the latest version of macOS I can install?

It actually runs decent but is an old machine that was the lowest spec'd MBA offering from 2010 with a C2D and only 2GB of ram.

I installed Linux Mint on it and it runs simply amazing (for the hardware). I want to do the same with upgrading to a later, unsupported version macOS like Big Sur or Monterey. What macOS version can I run that won't bog down the machine? Here are the specs:

  • MacBook Air (late-2010)
  • Model A1370 (EMC 2393)
  • CPU: Core 2 Duo 1.4 Ghz
  • 2GB ram (soldered)
  • 64GB SSD (I've upgraded this to 1TB with an adapter)
  • Shipped OS: 10.7.5 Lion
  • Latest official OS update: 10.13.6 High Sierra
Author: @Pixel6P