Firefox/Mozilla operated without any of the new additions for nearly the entire history of the internet until this year. If anything, "over"-reacting to the new policies was too weak a reaction. You do you and all, but I'll agree to very strongly disagree.
I think it's incredibly important that people know, with absolute certainty, whether or not the new Mozilla/Firefox privacy policy in any way applies to / covers such a service.
I'm not saying I know the answer- What I'm saying without a concrete, permanently applied answer it's not even considerable.
To answer your questions though, I suggest the non-Cosmic version of Pop!OS. (and switch to wayland if it's not the default yet- not sure, I've had this install for YEARS) It's a good blend of "just works" and "up to date enough" to run anything, and I recommend steering well clear of Arch. I've been using Linux for a decade and I've always found a way to whoopsie it into a broken state. That's a "me problem" yes, but if I can fudge it up that easily and I have experience using it, I think it's unsuitable to recommend to anyone.
Most people live in a web browser- does it really matter if the desktop environment isn't riced enough or isn't windows-ey enough?
That said, it takes actual hackery to make any version of Windows usable these days, so I'll forgive a distro not being "absolutely elite" for someone's preferences. Let's not compare Linux forums to Windows forums, where no-one has ever, I repeat ever received ANY useful advice besides reinstalling their Windows, am I right?
They've gone out of their way to avoid showing the hatch opened. From the pictures they DO have there, it appears the hatch opening area is borderline useless. My question is WHY?
Cool!