Since it’s your first time, my first suggestion is to try Xubuntu (Ubuntu with XFCE desktop) or Kubuntu (Ubuntu with KDE desktop and generally more popular than Xubuntu). Both distributions are lighter on resources and they have an Ubuntu base which means there’s a ton of documentation online so if you run into problems, you will have plenty of resources.

Alpine is small for sure but it is more niche and it doesn’t use systemd which most major distributions use which means if you happen to run into weird issues, your pool of resources will be smaller. Don’t get me wrong, Alpine is great but I wouldn’t recommend it for new users. I don’t know anything about Puppy Linux; maybe it’s fine?

If your machine can’t run Xubuntu or Kubuntu, then worry about trying more niche distros like Alpine or Puppy.

If you run into issues, feel free to ask questions. The community is generally nice but you’ll want to try fixing it yourself first and then including what you tried in your post to get a better reception.

Embrace the terminal. It’s daunting at first but it’s such a powerful tool. Don’t use sudo with every command. Don’t paste random command in the terminal without doing a little research to understand what they do. Again, ask if you need help, you won’t learn everything overnight.

Good luck!

Edit: Linux Mint is also probably a good choice. Never used it myself but I’ve heard good things.