I see you have only two different answers so far. which is just not playing the game. i’ll give you another two; there are at least 15 “best lightweight linux distro”. For your use, I’d pick any one at random, try it out on a bootable usb.
Personslly, I’d try stock debian and choose LXQT for a lightweight desktop.
puppylinux also deserves a mention, I always have a bootble PL usb lying around somewhere. Its reliable , fast for a usb, very good potato-compatibility, has loads of useful programmes and utilitiea already in there. I’ve never actually installed it permanently though. Scared of making a commitment to slackware that I don’t understand.
I’d avoid Damn Small and Tiny Core though - unless you really need them. Cool as they are they are well out of mainstream.
Personally I’d advise against linux then. even if it means a million downvotes here.
Windows or actually OSX (if you’re ok with mac hardware) or chromeos will work much better for people who don’t ever want to do any basic configuration of their system. All of those have their own issues of course, so it’s a tradeoff for the user to consider. If doing no basic config is the #1 requirement, then I think that rules out linux as the correct choice.
If a user would stay maybe 12-24 months behind the cutting edge then they might be ok with a rolling release. The one time I did get a latest gen Wifi/BT card, I had to migrate from Debian to Arch to get it working.
I belive the only way youll get that experince with linux is with defined hardware - laptops or steamdeck. Linux is never going to cover all possible bleeding edge hardware combinations in a custom PC with no user config effort.
Until or unless linux becmes bigger than MS, and all HW manufactures get theur linux drivers working before the device goes on sale, as a matter of course. Never gonna happpen unless MS actually goes bust or something. I can’t see linux ever competing in B2B market; do all linux distributers combined have the resources to smarm up to a million corpo procurement twats? I don’t think so.