Ping for an answer to your question last week.
THIS is why Linux (a superior operating system) is not the leader and Windows is.
1) Choose a Distro.
Explain that to Grandma who just wants to turn it on and see pictures of her grandchildren.
I said chose a "distro", not a "bistro"!
Your mid article link is bad
You have
https://freerepublic.com/linux-starters-guide-linux-choose-distro/2/
When it should be
https://www.linuxlinks.com/linux-starters-guide-linux-choose-distro/2/
Seems like you did the same thing on your last FR thread based on a Linux article from this same website.
Ubuntu. Most compatible, easiest to install & use. So simple even a Windows Admin can do it.
Ubuntu, Ubuntu and Ubuntu. LOL
Ubuntu and it's variants(Oh I hate that word now) really are the best for the general public. Anything else is for complete nerds and if you try to get help, they turn into very nasty little nerds.
I've looked at all the non Ubuntu lightweight distros recently and they're all weird in some way. Linux Lite isn't half bad. Peppermint OS also. The rest are for the fore mentioned nerds.
Xubunt & Lubuntu are pretty lightweight yet main stream enough to have plenty of usage, plus, general Ubuntu support works for most things. You can type a question into duckduckgo and half the time, the answer will show in a block to the right of the general results. That block will be based on an answer from stackexchange or askubuntu
Raspian :) ....
Imho the idea of “update pain” is an historical concept but not really relevant any more. Used to be you updated your computer and something that used to work stopped working or there was some dependency hell to go untangle. Nowadays I just don’t see it. Everything just works. Am on Fedora 34 at home and Ubuntu 18.04 at work. No problems to report. Upgrades are not an issue but I think articles like tbis have not caught up to this reality.
Make sure the Linux you pick has XFCE ,it will look like Windows and not scare you to death ,LOL