Best laptop for under $475

Looking for a simple laptop that can be used for coding and music listening. Also, any recommendations for great linux distros for laptops. Thank you for your time.

If you're really desperate for a cheap laptop, I recommend grabbing a chromebook and throwing your operating system of choice on it.  Make sure it's an x86 one though, I'm not too sure what would happen if it's ARM-based.

I personally use a Latitude e6220. ~$300 on ebay + $80 for a new 128 GB SSD and $100 for a 2nd battery for dual config (10-15 hr battery life). When the power features are disabled, it's insanely fast (normal PC otherwise) and I tend to drop laptops on accident a lot. Latitude series + SSD = safe to drop or at least as safe as it gets.

programs and os that are made for arm based computers are not compatible with x86.

This one just BARELY stays under $475, but I don't think you can beat it for the money. It is an AMD A10 APU clocked at 2.5ghz with 6GB of DDR3 RAM, and a 1TB drive. It has a 15 inch screen, and my friend has it, and it is GREAT. It will play almost any game to ever exist, with medium to high settings. It is also only an inch thick, so it is reasonably portable. The one con to this great machine is the sound card. It is a special one with only one plug for headphones AND mic. If you use earphones like the Apple earbuds, it works great. It works fine with normal 3.5mm headphones as well. However, the only way I have found to use a normal headphone and mic was to buy a cheap usb sound card. It works great with that though, and other than this small issue my friend had no complaints about it. (as a matter of fact he frequently brags about it being the best out of all our laptops)