Would it be possible for this to work on weaker hardware?

[kunokdev]

Would this instance work on a 12GB RAM/i5/1TB HDD laptop for whole planet data?
Would you go against setting it up on so much weaker hardware?

[merlinnot]

That's definitely possible to run this on even weaker hardware, but it will obviously run slower. The main factor in your configuration would be the HDD, Nominatim makes a massive amount of small reads and writes, especially during the import process. You can check out some benchmarks here.