Isn’t installing extensions in it also a pain, since the Google webstore doesn’t let you install from it?
I guess to answer my own question, I looked it up - there’s an extension to let you do that alongside some flag changes, so I guess not too bad… But it’s another step on the list of things you’d want to do as a user
It’s not being made “as painful as possible”, it’s just manual. Arch isn’t a distro that’ll preconfigure things for you so everything’s plug’n’play, it’s a distro that’ll give you access to everything and the power to use it however you like, but with that comes the expectation and responsibility to manage those things.
Installing arch manually is simply a good lesson in how your system is set up, what parts it’s made up of, in part because you’re free to remove and switch out those parts.
And sure, there’s no magic bullet to make sure a new user understands everything they did, but I think in the end, if you’re not willing to read, learn and troubleshoot, you might just want a different distro.