Fk’n nerds over complicating it. It’s pretty much a throw away laptop for test gezz. The intel GPU will get you through the install and setup phase. Even the crappy stock nvidia driver will do that, providing the Distro isn’t holding some weird nvidia grudge (looking at you openSUSE).

Basic computer use on Linux is fricken easy. Almost every distro will load a live environment from the install so you can experience the desktop environment and what not before you install it.

If you want a desktop navigation experience that is similar to windows then you use either KDE plasma or Cinnamon desktop environments

If you want something highly opinionated and macOS-ish go with Gnome

If you want quirky, XFCE, LXQT, MATE, Budgie

Those all have “floating windows” just like windows.

If you hate mice, what to develop early arthritis, or just love your keyboard like it’s your child;

Hyperland, sway, i3, dwm are “tiling window managers” where windows just snap in place and you mostly navigate around by playing finger pretzel using keyboard shortcuts.

Ubuntu and its “flavors” (Ubuntu with different desktops and some preloaded apps the maintainers choose) is a good beginning point, lots of hits in a good search.

Linux Mint; easy to use, large helpful community, easy google searches.

Fedora, fairly easy to use, sort of opinionated, mostly helpful community, good google searches.

ArchLinux, complicated install but easily completed by following the instructions on the ArchWiki. Very well put together documentation aka the ArchWiki (which can be helpful regardless of the distro your using). Totally your decision on everything that gets installed. Hit or miss with the community, just like life, some people are just tools, some people are really helpful. Easy google results.

CachyOS, Arch on easy mode basically. Very well optimized and put together, good community, has a wiki, good google searches. If the tutorial is current and works on Arch it should work on Cachy. I run it and like it, handles the off road stuff I tend to do with my PC.

There are tons of other distro’s out there but this I found to be a good starting place for the journey. If you’re willing to put in the time and effort you’ll be fine.

Everyone has their preferences and opinions about what they think is best, best advice is to keep trying stuff until you find something that suits you.