There have been bloated "easy to use" distros for a long time. But the based Linux distros like Arch & Debian have stayed pretty much untouched in my opinion. And, even tough I'm using plain Arch now, I also started into Linux using EndevourOS. It's just more convenient and not too big of a hurdle to get into the Linux universe.

That's not an argument for me, because less RAM usage by the operating system leaves you with more resources left for your applications and programms.