But here’s my opinon, if you’re interested: maybe, just maybe, don’t use Ubuntu. Of course, do what you want. If it appeals to you, that’s great! :)
Ubuntu is often recommended as a good beginner Distro, but that’s not true anymore. That used to be a good choice a few years ago, but it is more and more hated by the community. The company developing it forces way too much of their own stuff onto new users, especially snaps (their own packaging format that sucks). In general, Ubuntu doesn’t provide you the best Linux impression anymore.
If you want to know more, then take a look into this and this video from TheLinuxExperiment.
Also, as long as your laptop isn’t super old (>10 years) it should pretty much run anything, not only those “revive your toaster-laptop”-distros. Try Mint or some other beginner-friendly-mainstream-distros too and take a look on how they perform :)
I personally love Fedora for example (just ask me why) and believe it might also be a solid beginner distro, especially since the default desktop (Gnome) looks so alien compared to Mac or Windows, you automatically assume that it doesn’t work like those two.