Arch is hard not just because of the installation, it’s because of everything after. There are so many small things you expect your OS to have set up automatically that you might not even know exist that Arch expects you to do by hand. Arch doesn’t enable TRIM on your SSDs by default, it has no firewall. It doesn’t install microcode, leaving you open to many security exploits. It NEVER cleans old downloaded packages from it’s cache, something you will only find out about after you start looking for where 300GB of your disk space went to. It requires specific arcane syntax commands to install and update packages. You seriously expect someone coming over from Windows and MacOS to do those things or even know they need to do them? I haven’t used Ubuntu in a long time and wouldn’t use it now but it’s still an easy recommendation just because I know it has the least abrasions for a new user to encounter. After they learn how Linux works and feel comfortable, they themselves can branch out and try other distros.
You’re welcome! But yeah, this just further proves my point.