Why Arch based distro then? Why not, say, Fedora? Debian. Popos.

Arch elitists don't want you to know this but you can just type archinstall and a text installer guide thingy will install the system for you based on what you tell it.

That said, you're spot on on the last part. I love arch exactly because it is the easiest one to customize the way I want to but it's not for everyone and not everyone should use it

I would have to learn [...] what packages I need, what are the ups and downs of the various packages

I consider that important knowledge for just using and troubleshooting your system, and one of the great reasons to go through the installation process - knowing what you're using and why means when you want to change the behavior of something or figure out why it broke, you'll know what software to look for.

Not just something to do for fun, or to have precisely the right things, but so you understand what it is you truly do have. This isn't to say your approach is invalid, but for me it's a reason to recommend Arch for people who want to go through the learning process.

I would have to learn how to install Arch

I didn't know how until I did it. There's a very comprehensive guide that you follow. If you can follow the recipe for cookie batter and manage to make the cookies, you'll be able to install Arch. 🤟

what packages I need, what are the ups and downs of the various packages for handling the same things, resolve any conflicts I accidentally created, and then I can get to installing the things I actually want.

To be fair that's something you'd have to do regardless of distro, even on Windows. Learning which tools you like takes like half a career worth of time.

Yeah, I mean, if I were to admin a fleet of computers or something like that, I would definitely not run Arch on those. 😅

That's not a misconception, but with a slight modification. Stick around:

First of all, you can decide to do an upgrade at your own leisure. There's no need to run it 10 times a day as some memes will have you believe. I upgrade probably once a week, but I feel like that's a lot. If nothing is broken, no need to upgrade. Of course, I want to keep up with security updates and browser updates, so when those happen, I tend to upgrade too. So probably once every six weeks should be enough (keep up with the browser schedule).

Anyway, the modification I mentioned is that you don't need to follow anything. The only thing you should to do is to check archlinux.org for any news items before you upgrade. It's extremely rare that there are manual actions needed, and when there are, it's even more seldom for a package that I personally have installed. I think maybe once or twice in a decade I've had to actually do anything, and it's been minor. It always has the exact command or tells you exactly what to do. They never leave you on your own with these things.

A lot less maintenance than Windows back when I was running that, I'll tell you that much.