The stuff with lead in it is much easier to use. Very hard to use the lead-free multicore stuff in a home environment.
Even the commercially soldered lead-free boards are known to be less reliable than the leaded ones. Over time, the lead-free tin grows spikes which then short parts of the circuit.
Lead wasn't banned from solder because of any risk when soldering - the reason for the ban was to stop lead leaching into groundwater when old electronics end up in land fill. The risk to the person soldering comes from the flux, not the lead - and that's the reason you should take steps to avoid breathing the fumes.
I use a computer fan, powered from a 3-cell LiPo when soldering. I 3D printed a shell to hold the fan, and it sucks the air through some filter material I bought on-line. I stand it on the desk behind where I'm soldering, and it produces a gentle air current that takes the smoke into the filter rather than up into my face. The filter probably doesn't catch much of the flux smoke, but at least the smoke is going away from me rather than towards.
If you must use lead free, then it's even more important than usual to keep everything spotlessly clean - the PCB, the components, the soldering iron and the solder itself. Use plenty of flux - the watery stuff that you apply using a thing that looks like a marker pen, or the stuff that comes in bottles that can be applied like nail varnish works well. You need a soldering iron with accurate temperature control, set to a higher temperature than when using solder that contains lead. I usually set my iron to about 350 C for lead-based solders, and close to 400 C for the lead free ones.
I've also used lead-free solder paste - I think it contains bismuth. That melts at a lower temperature than the lead solders, and although it's really intended for use with hot plates and reflow ovens, you can use it for normal soldering with an iron, though it's messy to apply, and messy to clean off any paste that you don't actually melt. Normally you melt all the paste - it starts off looking like grey toothpaste, but once it's been heated up, the flux turns into smoke, as usual, and the solder has the normal silver colour.