I have an odd recommendation. Install puppy Linux on it. Years ago, it was my default choice for older machines like this. It runs completely on RAM, has extremely small footprint, extremely snappy and very featureful. I think over the years, the development has stagnated. However, you should be able to get a few years old ISO, copy it to a USB stick and you are good to go. The ISOs are usually in the range of 100-150 MB. Even if your laptop has just 1-4 GB of RAM, this will fly. Oh, by the way, it has most (types of) applications out of the box. It has native support for older hardware.

Maybe try something like Bazzite

I set up Evolution for my work office365 account. It worked exactly for 2 days. Now, it constantly keeps asking for password again and again and nothing shows up. I’m trying out Thunderbird with Owl plugin (trial) and that works flawlessly. Any tips on getting it to work on Evolution?

I understand your point completely. I’m a long time Arch Linux user, so I’m not averse to manual interventions.

I was considering tumbleweed on my work laptop. This makes me nervous. Was it easy to fix?

Try Puppy Linux on it. It runs with meager resources - ~100MB RAM, 250MB storage (only if you want to install it to disk). Everything runs in RAM and is blazing fast. It is a God send for older computers