I agree with everything you said. If someone is new and wants to have a rock solid experience, then it might make sense to get a long term support version of the distribution that’s chosen. It’s a trade-off of shiny new upgrades for almost guaranteed stability.
When I installed Ubuntu on an HP laptop recently, I got a message that I didn’t have the drivers for my internal Intel wireless chip. It was at this point that I realized the laptop also didn’t have an Ethernet port. The installer told me to put the drivers on a flashdrive. Thankfully the error spelled out enough for me to find the drivers online. There were a few different versions and I put them all on the stick.
Bluetooth didn’t work, but I realized that was fixed by just enabling the service with systemctl.
And since then, people have created even darker black pigments. So the man is left holding someone people will never want.