Another hot take: Beginner-friendly distros are good for beginners.
Like many others, I wanted to rid myself of Windows but I needed it to as painless as possible so I was looking for something that feels like Windows but is not Windows. If I didn’t have Mint to ease me into it and instead had to set up Arch from scratch, I would have likely gotten frustrated and gone back to Windows. I don’t want to go back to Windows.
There’s a distro for everyone, and I’ll continue to recommend Mint to those who are getting sick of Windows and looking for a familiar alternative. That’s who it’s made for.