Distrochooser is not a good resource for newbies IMO. There are too many questions, many of which are misleading or hard to understand (NOBODY taking this knows what systemd is)
Many answers are misleasing: “I want a distro that is supported by game publishers” for example implies each distro has its own game compatibility, this is NOT the case.
And when you’re finally done it recommends too many distros, many of which are irrelevant, niche, or flat out not recommended anymore (PCLinuxOS?!?!)
When someone asks for a distro, please just run a random number generator to choose between ZorinOS, PopOS, or Linux Mint. If someone is only gaming, maybe include Nobara too.
The nomenclature is actually correct here, and a lot of other software use it, at least from everything I’ve seen. Release candidate means it’s stable and (usually) feature complete but could have bugs and needs testing before they launch it.
Maybe you’re not subscribed to many places, I see it everywhere in my feeds. For what it’s worth I rarely see it on Lemmy outside of meme and politics communities.