Linux Distro
Linux Distro
Not gonna lie, this is an example of genuinely having excessive and pointless personal requirements for your computing experience. It's like the PC gamers who get mad when their frame rate drops under 240 fps for a few seconds. What the hell kind of workflow do you have where you have to be constantly opening programs? Why not just leave them open? Do the programs themselves have performance issues while they are running? I can't imagine a scenario where it makes sense to upgrade from your (still fairly modern) PC just in order to get programs to open slightly faster.
This comment mostly addressed the idea that you might need a quicker machine rather than something personal. I’ve tried several lightweight distros on my laptop (i5-4200U with 8GB DDR3) and none performed noticeably better than Mint XFCE for basic tasks like booting or using LibreOffice, which usually takes just a few seconds.