Yeah this is the way. Debian stable has outdated packages, debian testing has broken packages. Ubuntu is difficult for beginners because of snap. Linux mint is the perfect just-works debian-based beginner distro. Same for DE: Gnome is hard to use, KDE is bloated and unstable, and XFCE is too minimalist/diy/quirky for beginner users (you need to add a panel applet in order for the volume keys to work? Huh??). Cinnamon is the perfect middle ground between resource usage and features.

Make sure during installation that you create a 4 GB swap partition too

Or at least as large as your RAM if you want to be able to hibernate.

“The fuck else were these people expecting” is also my visceral reaction whenever shit like that happens, but if I think about for a bit longer, I realize that it’s not much different than saying “The fuck else were you expecting” to a rape victim who went alone into a dark alley. Sure, people are stupid for engaging with this obvious scam, but the bad guy is still the scammer, not the victims.