when I started using Linux ~2009. Ubuntu (really Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu) has gotten some heat over the past few years for making some anti-user choices like including Amazon in the home menu's search, etc, which led me to skip a release of theirs. They've cleaned up their act lately so I've stayed on that train.

I've heard good things about Mint; it's basically the same thing under the hood as Ubuntu just retooled a little bit here and there.

I would not recommend Arch if you don't have an interest in the nuts and bolts of linux nor some experience dealing with Linux packages (which other distributions make easy). Its benefit is that you are in complete control of what's on the machine, down to the level of drivers, etc. Its cost is that you have complete responsibility for that.

So you could kind of look at it like this
Ubuntu based - Ubuntu, Mint, Elementary - user friendly
Fedora based - Centos, Fedora, RedHat - developer, IT, etc. friendly
Arch based - hobbiest (ie you want to play with the machine itself, not use the machine), paranoid, really specific developer use case friendly