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I can relate to your attitude and desire to learn Linux, I've felt the same.

I highly recommend this book: https://www.amazon.com/How-Linux-Works-2nd-Superuser/dp/1593275676/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=how+linux+works&qid=1558200935&s=gateway&sr=8-2

I read about a chapter or two a day with some coffee. It's fun and interesting. I think it's right up your alley.

For me, there's two types of Linux learning. Things I learn for fun, and things I learn because I have to or my stuff doesn't work. I started with a lot more things I learn for fun, but now most things I learn because I have to.

I do web development on a Manjaro machine using KDE. I love the distro, but I didn't try any others. I don't need to. It's fine. I use Debian on a lot of the webservers, that's fine too.

My feeling is, all these distros you're looking at have much more in common than not. If you set up a Desktop Environment, a popular one like GNOME or KDE on ANY distro, it's gonna be pretty similar. If you just want to use the shell on any distro, well, you can install whatever shell you want, use of that shell on any distro will be pretty similar.

IMO, you should focus MUCH more on deciding what DE/WM and shell you'll be using. This is going to play a much bigger role in your daily use than what distro you use. I think you should look up youtube videos and online tutorials of different people using different shells, scripts, WMs, VIM, etc, and see what excites you.

You can install Arch, step by step, using the wiki, and it's not that hard. It feels scary and weird at first, but you're just cooking, you're following a recipe, and if you mess up a step, a bunch of people have messed that step up too, google it.

Don't think too much. Just jump in.

Neither, I use ICY DOCK and like devices, you can get Icy Dock for single SSD/HDD to multiple drives. I use it to change my boot drive to transferring data from my PC to laptop and so on. So the 2.5" part is to insert a boot SSD (Window or a Linux distribution OS) and the 3.5" I use to transfer data or back it up to a 6T HDD.

For my desktop I use: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00834SJ8K/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 and https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-5-25in-Trayless-Mobile-3-5in/dp/B000KS8S9W/ref=pd_sbs_147_1/145-7509564-3873745?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=B000KS8S9W&pd_rd_r=eef1512f-6959-4fde-9177-ce62c8768090&pd_rd_w=RY63p&pd_rd_wg=xKSNf&pf_rd_p=5873ae95-9063-4a23-9b7e-eafa738c2269&pf_rd_r=AQ0G50CK9G4ZQWMVKEFQ&psc=1&refRID=AQ0G50CK9G4ZQWMVKEFQ that needs https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002Z2QDNE/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&th=1 if I want to use a 2.5" drive to transfer info.

For my laptop https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07HY1QLJX/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 so I don't have a DVD any more but any hot swap SSD port now. :-) Or press my keys to select a boot device and boot another OS.

Icy Dock does offer this same technology https://www.icydock.com/goods.php?id=245, just an idea, a flexible idea to me. Win on one NVMe SSD, a Linux distro on an other NVMe SSD, and have as many as you want this way, I do.

It depends on what you mean by lagging. If you're talking about load times? No. If you're talking about lag within applications that are already open? Maybe, but I wouldn't expect you to have much trouble with Windows 7 on that computer.

You could get a 250GB SSD under $50 and it will easily be the best upgrade to your computer.

Only being able to open one thing at a time is very limiting. I worry that this might end up not being a very pleasant Linux experience.

I would still recommend purchasing some extra RAM. According to a brief search it should cost only around $20 to upgrade this machine to 2GB, which would be a massive difference in usability. (You should check the manual for your manual to double check if this is possible though, I have seen some people saying that this machine might only support 1GB max)