Anything will be fine. I’d try a xfce/lxqt desktop, but even on old dual cores the newest kde is good.

Everyone says mint, but suse has a huge German community because it’s from Germany.

Another person said you should upgrade to ssd and maybe add more ram, and I agree with them. Usually I spend $40 to do that to laptops and it makes real dogs run great.

Post the model numbers on the bottom of the laptops and I can give some pre-gifting upgrade advice with actionable links. Both seem to take 2.5” sata ssds so that’s good and cheap, but there’s different models of the aspire es-15 which take different memory sizes.

If you do take the cheap ssd replacement route, give them one of those usb hdd enclosures with the old big rotational hdd in there. They’re like seven bucks and it means they have a place to hold a backup of their data if the gift laptop dies.

Regarding Specs, I'd choose a lite DE.

• Xubuntu
• Linux Mint with Mate or Xfce

You can even use an LTS version for longer lasting editions.

That's a pretty weak machine. Linux Mint is my #1 recommendation for new Linux users, especially former Windows users. It's what I moved my parents to on their very old computer and it works great.

Try the default Linux Mint Cinnamon desktop first, but if it seems really slow, go with the XFCE version.

You really need to use an SSD in that laptop if possible, it will speed things up to a usable level. Also, if the RAM is upgradable, you should put 8GB minimum in it. DDR3 laptop sticks are dirt cheap, you can get them online for $20-$30 for 8GB sticks.

Same with SSDs, get a 1000GB brand new SSD for $50-$60, it will make everything much more responsive.

There are lots of choices, but personally I would go with Linux Mint as something likely familiar and packaged with pretty much all the basics for the use case you outlined.

Linux Mint for sure.

It's more welcoming to newbies than even Windows.

I'd also recommend Mint with Mate or Xfce. They have a German forum too.

New user that didn't exactly choose to try Linux, I'd go with Ubuntu or Mint just for the sake of being compatible with pretty much anything you'd find when looking up "how to X on Linux". On those specs I guess I'd go Xubuntu or Mint Xfce edition.

I'd try a few Wayland compositors and X11 WMs on the thing and see what performs the best. Depending on the graphics situation and drivers, Wayland can be faster or slower. At this vintage I'd guess the best will be Xorg with no compositor at all, just plain 2D acceleration, but sometimes even the crappiest OpenGL can be surprising.

If you put Waydroid on it, it'll also double as a shitty Android tablet. Almost all bank apps will refuse to run because it's not a certified device, but it will be some common interface their friends are more likely to be able to help with.

I guess there's also the option of just installing ChromeOS on it.

Internet surfing

Forget web browsing with 4GB RAM. You can completely disregard the comments recommending a "lite DE" when merely opening a modern web site will put the whole PC into crawling. The 150 MB more or less for different desktops are completely irrelevant then.

The best "newbie friendly" distribution is just plain Fedora Workstation but with only 4GB RAM it will be a pain to use no matter what.

Edit: If you're a KDE user yourself, you're best equipped to answer KDE-related questions.

I put antiX on a 2 Gb HP 1 x core Atom a little while ago. It's used for notetaking at meetings with LibreOffice, internet browsing through wifi. Not particularly heavy usage but it runs suprisingly well. As your hardware is a bit restricted, perhaps try that. Edit: spelling

I have similarly basic needs, and I stopped distro-hopping when I found Q4OS a few years ago. It seems to run well on most hardware and, while I can't speak as to how well-supported it is in German, its community is based in Germany.

Pop! Os

Imo.