pixeledadler

Okay. I also had this problem. Here are the steps, you have to take to install arch in efi configuration:
 
When you have booted from the USB:
1. do a time synchronisation
timedatectl set-ntp true 2. Then use cfdisk to partition the drive
cfdisk /dev/sda It has quite a good UI to make the partitions. Depending of the size of your disk, I would either suggest
If you have more than 50GB of space
/dev/sda1 512MB for /boot
/dev/sda2 1.5x your RAM size for swap
/dev/sda3 25G for /
/dev/sda4 the rest for /home
 
If less then 50G, then leave the /home out and use the whole space for the /
 
3. Lets format the partitions
mkfs.fat -F32 /dev/sda1 mkswap /dev/sda2 mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda3 mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda4 If you don't have a separate partition for your /home, don't do the last command.
These commands will format the efi partition in FAT32, make a swap partition and format your system to EXT4 file system.
 
4. Now lets mount to /mnt
swapon /dev/sda2 *for the swap partition mount /dev/sda3 /mnt *this will mount the root to /mnt as in the manual mkdir /mnt/boot /mnt/home *leave the home out, if you don't have a home partition mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot *for the efi and grub mount /dev/sda4 /mnt/home *If you have a home partition 5. Now let's install.
You can, before the installation, edit the mirror list for faster download, but it is up to you. There is some wudu magic as how the servers are ordered in the /etc/mirrorlist it makes some sense. I would suggest to install everything with this:
pacstrap /mnt base base-devel linux linux-firmware You will need all of these eventually. That is why I like to install them at the beginning. You can also toss in there some other programs you know, you will need.
 
6. Create the file system table
genfstab -U /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab If after all installation the system still does not want to function properly with the partitions, then omit the -U, so no UUID will be used for partition identification, but rather just their file system  i.e. /dev/sda*
 
7. Change root to your newly install arch
arch-chroot /mnt 8. Set the timezone
As per the manual
 
9. Also localization as per manual
 
10. Set your computer name aka hostname
Please substitute the *your computer name here* with the actual name you want to call your computer
touch /etc/hostname echo *your computer name here* >> /etc/hostname You should also configure the hosts file.
Open it by
nano /etc/hosts and add these lines at the end of the file changing the hostname with your actual hostsname aka the name you named your computer in previous step
127.0.0.1 localhost ::1 localhost 127.0.1.1 *hostname*.localdomain *myhostname* 11. You will also need a network manager and you install it by simply typing
pacman -S networkmanager You also need to enable it, so you have internet after the installation
systemctl enable NetworkManager 12. Now lets set a password for the root, so no one can exploit that by simply typing
passwd and type a good password. Most likely you won't be using this password ever. but who knows
 
13. Let's add a standard user without root privileges.
useradd -m *your username* Give the user some priviliges
usermod -aG wheel,audio,video,optical,storage *your username* And now we will have to do something a bit more challenging, but hang in there. We need to give the user occasional root access by adding the user to the sudo group. Type in
nano /etc/sudoers and locate this line and make damn sure this is the line:
# %wheel ALL=(ALL) ALL and uncommet (delete the hashtag) at the beginning of the line.
 
14. Now let's seal with the GRUB and EFI
First we need to install the grub and an efi tool
pacman -S grub efibootmgr And now let the magic happen:
grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot --bootloader-id=Arch This command will install the efi system in the /boot directory and add Arch boot-loader to your computer boot manager
One more thing, we need to configure the grub
grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg And now you are officially all set for a fresh EFI Arch. What you do after is absolutely up to you, if you want to go wayland or xorg and what windows manager you want to use.

Sup,
as @sazrocks said, it's a good place to start with Pop!_OS. It is a quite user friendly and very Linux like distro, with one of the most, if not the most, popular desktop environments Gnome. Pop also has the most 3rd party app support. The most apps are made for Ubuntu and almost all of them work flawlessly on Pop.
 
A very good German produced Linux system is Manjaro. (https://manjaro.org/) It looks a bit more like Windows and could be easier to adopt, if you want to flatten the learning curve. It uses not so common desktop environment by default. It is very light on the hardware and the speed of installing, booting and sleep/wake is just staggering. It doesn't have a great app support, but if you only plan to use it for web and office, it is really good. It also includes an office, that is very similar to MS Office. Called FreeOffice (so choose this at the installation)
 
One of best backed systems out there is Fedora. It is quite heavy all together, but is a very robust system. One problem might be, it doesn't that great app support and You might have to tinker around to make everything work your way, if you need to use some special programs/apps.
 
I my self use Fedora, but it's just because I like to tinker around.

I run a plex server, few srcds servers, and a MC server for home usage. I regret using W10 over Ubuntu Desktop. I thought it would be soooo hard, but I made a VM with Ubuntu on it and dammmnn.. It's easy to use. W10 is so bloated with useless shit not needed for a home server.
 
If you think running a 'Linux server' is difficult. It isn't.. easy transition and I am a noob.

I have not used that model but I have used older IBM think pads before they were sold to Lenovo. Think pads are excellent with Linux. Some of them ship with Linux oem.

https://certification.ubuntu.com/certification/hardware/201412-16337/

I don't see why it wouldn't work right. I would give Zorin OS a try. I've been messing around with Zorin OS 12 Core for the past few days and I love the look of the interface and the overall feel of the OS.