@_elena Good luck, should be easy for you w that experience. Give Ventoy flashdrive a close look, its really useful for multi distro collection. FWIW MX I mentioned is based on Debian, and I'll admit to being biased towards it, it has so many useful tools in default install.

@_elena REALLY good resource is Explaining Computers youtube channel, Chris used to teach computers and is REALLY good at explaining stuff and is a great teacher & AFAIK person in my conversations w him. He has series for beginners including youtube.com/watch?v=n8vmXvoVjZ

@_elena @Edent Several of the Linux distros like MX, & probably Fedora or Ubuntu will handle drivers for Mac if you install with ethernet connection during install process. Some installs you have to be sure and use correct checkboxes, some you need to copy drivers from Mac OS before upgrade or get them elsewhere. Usually it is just drivers for Wifi, bluetooth, and sometimes audio because they are proprietary w Mac & some distros strict about default being no proprietary software just FOSS

@_elena Q4OS with Trinity desktop environment won the 3 way tie for first place in my 6 months testing on old 2010 Asus UL30vt laptop. But have not tested with a Mac yet. Other 2 in the tie: MX XFCE & Manjaro XFCE (Manjaro is based on Arch but has "training wheels" so easier in some ways to get started with, I don't recommend ether Arch or Manjaro for beginners unless using on test machine). Lot of things I like about Q4OS but not sure if install on Mac is as easy as MX q4os.org/

@_elena Mint XFCE (Cinnamon is the desktop environment usually done with Mint, but again not great choice for older hardware XFCE is better on older hardware in my testing) linuxmint.com/download.php

@_elena MX XFCE (the XFCE part refers to Desktop enviornment TLDR the graphical interface aspect you work with, XFCE is lighter than KDE better choice for RAM limited machines like old Macbook Air) works really well on Intel Macs based on both my research and testing, have it on 2017 Macbook Air. mxlinux.org/