If you’re not aquatinted with distrowatch yet, you should pop on there. It gives overviews of many distros. Asking for recommendations is fine too, but DW is a great resource. On an older machine that needed something light, Sparky Linux was fun. I didn’t use it for it’s particular bundling but still felt smooth and solid. I’m assuming you want lightweight since you mentioned a destroyed laptop? There’s things like Puppy Linux but that feels almost too light to me and maybe didn’t feel finished to me either. Normally Id just straight up suggest Mint but you said you didn’t want that.