You can install any distro that you like just pick a light weight window manager, like ICEwm, FluxBox, OpenBox, Enlightenment, BlackBox. Xfce, or LXDE. Dont do Gnome, KDE, Unity or any of their forks because require more resources.
I should point you to Bodhi Linux (
http://bodhilinux.com/) which is a Ubuntu base with light wight applications.
If you download it try the liveCD first to make sure your hardware respond well to it.
Good luck to you!