How would you set up a fallback kernel in Arch?

Exactly. archinstall is pretty nice, and if you want the frustration of dealing with random errors, it’s still there. But it’s straightforward (but keep the docs handy since you’ll likely need them).

Yup, that’s been my experience with getting people to at least consider Linux as well. The first thing they ask when I tell them it’s a different OS like Mac is, “so can it run XYZ?” Most people don’t actually care and just want something that runs the apps they use.

Interestingly, my mom (a Windows user her whole life) seemed just as alienated by macOS as by Linux. Her work gave her a Mac and she couldn’t understand anything after about a week so she just asked for a Windows system instead.