I think guides like these should primarily focus on where the (potential) new user is coming from and should primarily base their recommendations on that.
They are very likely coming from Windows. So, why do they want to switch? I personally finally made the switch because Windows got in my way more and more with a lot of nagging and changing back things to (bad) defaults even on smaller updates. Other users might just want to try Linux out of curiosity.
Then, it depends on what you primarily want to do. I personally use my machine for media, gaming and development. Others might just want to browse the web.
And based on this information, you’d then choose the distro with the least compromises for what the user is trying to achieve.
I agree that your tl;dr recommending Linux Mint will be good for a large chunk of users: Cinnamon is somewhat similar to the Windows UI, community support is great and hardware support is decent thanks to options regarding newer kernels and a workable UI to install proprietary drivers. It has some confusing bits, for example the installer defaults to ext4 and then the introduction guide (post install) let’s you set up Timeshift, but obviously the btrfs option is grayed out, leaving you with rsync. If you want to use Mint with btrfs, you have to choose manual partitioning, which no beginner should have to do. I just think btrfs should be the default FS in most cases now.
For Ubuntu, I think the LTS version has valid use cases. Yes, Snaps suck, I know. But thanks to hardware enablement updates it has very solid hardware compatibility, it can install proprietary drivers (including Nvidia) and codecs during the initial install process and if you sign up for Ubuntu Pro - which is free for personal use - you get 10 years of maintenance updates. This is great for someone with simple workflows who just wants to get their stuff done. Someone who’s annoyed by Windows constantly bothering them about Edge or OneDrive or advertisement or whatever who just needs to browse the web, edit a document and send a few emails. This person couldn’t care less if their desktop environment is 10 years old, they rather hate it when UI/UX changes. Of course, Ubuntu nags you about Ubuntu Pro here and there, but once set up, you can have peace for 10 years (I think they’re even extending it for 24.04). And if you want to stay somewhat up-to-date, you always have the option to upgrade to the next LTS release. This is a distro I’d probably install for relatives who come to me annoyed by their current OS and I’d likely have a lot less maintenance and reexplaining to do than for most other distros.
You could make a similar point for Debian, but it’s a bit harder to install, proprietary drivers have to be manually installed, hardware support is worse and long-term support is shorter. It is rock stable, and while stability is not the same as reliability, stability often increases reliability significantly.
If you are like me and want a fairly up-to-date system with support for the latest hardware and (gaming-related) features, but still don’t want to be bothered a lot by your OS, Fedora is a great choice.
If curiosity is the main reason you want to give Linux a go, honestly, try whatever. Try multiple distros. Break things.
In the end, it’s obviously very subjective. But depending on the PoV, Snaps for example might not bother the user at all, ever. Why would the user care if Ubuntu showed Amazon advertisements in the past? Just because I personally don’t like it doesn’t mean it can’t be a good choice.