As your PC does not have SSE2, it means you have an Pentium III or worse. These CPUs are to slow for modern Systems, even a light Linux. Even Linux specialized on old PCs like Antix does not have support for these CPUs since its 2015 release https://antixlinux.com/ because you likely need a non pae version.
If your father doesn't want to spend much money, maybe you can persuade him to use a Raspberry Pi 4? It will pay for itsself in a year because of the much lower electrical bill.