They don't though. The recommendations for new users are nearly universally to use Debian or one of its most popular derivatives like Ubuntu or Mint, which are

They don't though. The recommendations for new users are nearly universally to use Debian or one of its most popular derivatives like Ubuntu or Mint, which are all very similar to one another and share the large majority of their code. It's like saying Windows has too many versions because there is Home/Pro/Education/Enterprise and then 23H2 vs. 24H2 etc. There is barely any difference between them. The distro wars are a bunch of programmers arguing about which one has the best toys for power users. Any of them will run a web browser and the boring popular Debian Stable or LTS derivatives are the ones least likely to deliver unscheduled maintenance as a result of an update.