Ubuntu or Mint is quite okay, I have used both of them in the past and set it up for a friend with little money, little time, and very little PC expertise. Worked perfectly for them for over 10 years without a problem.

Today, if you can get a little help with setting up, I'd recommend Debian stable with either GNOME or KDE. It is more stable and has longer and better long term security support, which did become more important.

Also, it is now easy to set up with disk encryption, which matters for keeping private data secure on Laptops which can get lost or stolen.