Have you checked out Puppy Linux? I loaded it on an old P2 laptop. Incredibly easy load and setup. Great for us newbies.
I’v found this Ubuntu 9.something... great for a newbie.. the learning curve isn’t too bad.
I have a GATEWAY laptop that had XP on it... and what I thought was a PROBLEM.. turned out to be SOP (meaning I wasn’t the only one)
knowing what I PAID for the Ubuntu..I’d have no problem trading it for something else... LOL
I used Puppy Linux all the time on a few old computers. It worked great unless you left it idle. The image would start inching up after awhile.