It feels like you’re just gate-keeping Linux because you apparently had a bad experience. It doesn’t sound like you’ve used an Arch-based distro in a while (or if you have, it was Manjaro - there has been a host of problems over there that will take a lot of time and effort to rebuild community trust, imo).

We’ve got 2 desktops and 2 laptops in our house all running Arch-based distros, the oldest being a little over 4 years old without any “breakage”. Two of the users had not even seen Linux prior to this, and one of them is not at all what I would consider “computer savvy”.

I can’t speak for vanilla Arch, but all of the “Arch with helpers” distros I’ve ran had pretty simple buttons to deal with system maintenance. Additionally, I’ve seen firsthand the difference a rolling-release distro can make over a “stable” release for game and hardware compatibility. It’s generally much easier to get (and keep) all the hardware working correctly on a gaming laptop in one of those arch-based distros than Debian or Mint, especially if it has an nvidia gpu. I couldn’t in good conscience recommend anything debian based to someone in that boat personally.

The use of the system matters A LOT when recommending a new distro. For some grandparents that just browse facebook and send e-mails - yea I’d probably just put Debian or LMDE on their system. I’m not sure I would make the same recommendation to anyone else though.