Are we lightweight? Let's ask the Internet.

[Moltke]

Stumble upon a nice article while writing this post when searching DuckDuckGo with "My First Distro" and Linux Lite is on there, yay!https://www.lifewire.com/choose-best-linux-distro-for-needs-2201172
A cool thing they put in there is "Level Of Expertise Required" for each distributions, I agree with most of their ratings too (maybe not Puppy that I would put a "Medium" on, always found it a little weird specially for a newbie. LoLz.

While the article is quite informational I don't agree on that Android requiring low expertise since at times you'll need to edit grub or it won't boot. I tried and failed lol Also, slackware "high" ... I've tried it and it was easy to install and set up, I didn't used it too long though. Arch "medium-high" definitely high, at least for install and set up, once you've done that is just like any other OS.

for a newbie those hundred of distributions can be quite overwhelming

I disagree, I know most people always say this but it is 2019 not 1970 so most people should have pretty much an idea what they want their OS to do, what they need it for, most people own and use on a daily basis mobile devices being a tablet, smartphone, raspberry pi or even a smart tv. Also, there's plenty of information on the web about it making it even easier to decide, look at sites like https://distrotest.net/  which allows you to try many distros in your browser without even downloading a single bit of it, or what about https://distrochooser.de/en/ which by answering some questions suggest some choices for you to try ... there's no excuse, if people want to try Linux the only thing keeping them from doing it is themselves.