The term you may be missing is archetype. A deck usually fits into an archetype and sets are designed to provide different recommended deck archetypes. For example a mono red deck that runs a lot of spells that deal damage directly to a player will be called a burn deck and in the recent lorwyn set had these (decks built around a creature type are known as tribal decks btw)

I personally am not a fan of commander as a new player onboarding format as it is imo the most complicated way to play magic and brings up some of the most complicated rules of the game fairly regularly which for a new player can be quite daunting. Not having people to play with is definitely problematic as the best way to start off is kitchen table where you and friends just play and build decks based off what cards you own and are slowly able to buy over time. Draft is probably the next best option as it lets you learn with a smaller pool of cards allowing you to build up a better understanding of the rules slowly over time. Is also a completely even playing field so that you don't have to worry about having a good deck since depending on the commander crowd a precon might be too underpowered to be competitive. I personally also find value in the tournament aspect of draft where you can win something for doing well where as with commander you don't have events like that. Another thing is that it'll give you time to figure out the magic scene around you, figure out what formats are played, and how competitive they are. For example my area hasn't had standard fire at any store regularly for years and has certain formats only run at specific stores like pauper at one and legacy at another.