I totally agree with you about "general users" and I think what I said concerning Ubuntu should have been clear enough about that. All I'm saying is that being a "general user" is not at all the same as being new to Linux. I don't see what's so hard to understand here. New Linux users can be "general users" or they can be more, let's say, "technical users." Long-time Linux users can also be of either type.

As you have said, you are an example of a user who is not new to Linux, but is a "general user." On the other hand, I am an example of someone who was once new to Linux but was not a "general user." What I said in the comment you linked was my own experience. When I was new to Linux, Mint was my first distro since it's so often recommended to "newbies." What I found, though, was that it was not what I was looking for because in actual fact, it's really tailored to "general users," not people who are new to Linux. I then tried a "not designed for newbies" distro (Bodhi in my case, not Arch, which I have still never really used much) and found that it suited me much better for the reasons I mentioned in that post.

So, between the two of us, we pretty clearly demonstrate that equating "new Linux users" with "general users" must be incorrect. Why don't people just say what's actually the case, which is that distros like Ubuntu and Mint are good for "general users" and distros like Arch and Bodhi are good for more "rechnical users"? Why even try to muddle the concept of "newbie" in there at all?