complete noobie novice....HELP!! already overwhelmed!

Bromilliade

I've just purchased a rebooted HP EliteBook 8460p Core i5, win 7 and an old firefox browser system, seemingly a bit dysfunctional.  Before I begin to work on this machine I am thinking of shifting my browser to Linux.  I'm not techno savvy at all.  I need guidance and am wondering if I can set this up myself??? 

Is there someone here who would be happy to encourage me and guide me through this process of

1. choosing the right distro

2.  guiding me to changing the format and shifting over to this new system and delete the old

3. as I am a real dummy with these things, I would ideally like you to help me understand what I am actually doing.  ie can take me by the hand and lead me to contented peace with a fully functioning computer to do office work, surf the net, do online webinairs, video's etc.  Not into gaming. 

Thank you in advance.

dday35216

Start here:

https://www.linux.com/what-is-linux

Read through this and check out the links to some of the more popular distros. Decide which on might be right for you and try it out in what is called a "Livemode" where you can run it without actually doing the install. 

Once you find one that you like the looks of and how the menus are laid out, you can install. The install will walk you through repartitioning your disk and all of that. 

Good luck

NuraboOo

Try Manjaro it is already build up with default application.