If you have to resort to browsing the web with a TUI every time you’re dropped into a tty then you really should think about using a different distro.

That’s a weird statement. Why? I browse the web frequently from terminals and the console. If you need a GUI so badly you have to boot from a live USB to answer questions, that’s you. I use live USBs on the rare occasion I screw up my boot loader, like when I swapped hard drives and didn’t catch all of the places device block IDs are referenced in the boot process.

Anyway, it’s weird to argue both that Arch Linux users should be expert shell users, but also that they should use a different distro if they’re capable of using Linux entirely without a GUI.

Several Arch-based distros are blurring the line between the self-rarified progenators of the “I use Arch, BTW” meme and non-technical users, by making it easier to install and maintain Arch. I absolutely agree that what these forks do is not the responsibility of core Arch, but I do expect a modicum of effort, the bare consideration to not intentionally making things harder for users than they need to be; to avoid actively breaking systems, where they can.

A release note is a sloppy answer when it’s almost trivial to avoid causing the breakage in the first place.