Long time VIM user here and I completely agree, not only for beginners, also for pros.

Basically it follows the KISS, and in some sense UNIX, principles.

I have never used the vim distros but I have gotten to a point where I just rm -rf'd my whole .vim dir and started over with only the plugins I required at the time. Then added more as I needed them.

Of course, I have always managed well without the file browsers many use.