With hardware like that I'd recommend Xubuntu, Lubuntu, Linux Mint (MATE edition), Crunchbang or some other distribution using a lightweight desktop environment. If you want to try out arch without the barebones approach to get your feet wet with Pacman/systemd; use Manjaro.
Yeah MS marketing is pretty horrible. I still facepalm at that dance/robot/popping commercial, and constant clicking of that damn kickstand. It's all really ass-backwards.
I think you're discrediting Ubuntu/Canonical and being harsh way too much. They've done a lot for the Linux ecosystem on the desktop. Whether one agrees with their desktop environment or not, we need a commercialized entity. I'm not a fan of Unity (I despise docks because I love textual cues...