Oh it very much is good for newbies, but... what you describe as 'roadblocks' are what I would describe as viable workarounds that maintain core OS integrity, and it has forced me to learn more about how just linux in general works, as well as docker and stuff like it.
But yeah I will totally give you that a more traditional Fedora is probably going to be easier for someone looking for a more traditional set up and all the normal stuff that works normally, lol.
Also yeah lol, properly setting up a low level portforward is basically always a struggle session no matter what distro you're on, at least on my experience.
But again, a workaround to that is to just set that up for one sandboxxed env, and then act accordingly, don't cross the streams.