I took a bunch of stuff from work that was gonna get recycled including a decent laptop and a flash drive. I work in network admin and IT if that narrows it down. Never used Linux before though.
Edit: Thanks everyone! I'm down for some problem solving so I think I'm gonna go the Arch/Manjaro direction so I can learn my way around Linux generally.
If you're going to use the laptop as a main driver, I say Debian since the laptop is most likely a few years old. Debian plays nicely with older equipment relative to other major distros. Otherwise, if you already have a dedicated PC and want to tinker with the laptop, Arch wouldn't be a bad idea.