Nah, I think just recommending the most popular distro is usually best because when new users do run into issues there are years of forums that has probably answered their question before and is just one search away
According to distrowatch for a couple of years going MX/linux is nearly twice as popular as the second most popular.
MX were part of the mepis community antiX belonged to too, with more than a decade of history and body of forum discussion.
IBM puppet rag phoronix? For over a decade they have not made a single reference an alternative to systemd exists or a distribution without systemd actually exists.