> But after a while, I got tired of manually configuring everything, doing all kinds of weird house-keeping and having to randomly boot from a USB stick to rescue my system from some update with untested consequences
Honestly, this was my experience in the first months with the distro, back in 2011, but then I started feeling like I 'know' Arch, like I understand how to use pacdiff, what news to pay attention to and what commands to run, as well as what not to forget to avoid trouble and honestly, it's been the most stable OS I've known.
So yes, there's a 'bump' you have to overcome with Arch, but once you 'get it', it becomes second nature.
I honestly cannot remember how long I had Arch installed on my main system, but I replaced it with Mint about a year ago, and I have files in my home folder dating back to 2007, so give or take around 9 years.
So I would definitely say I "got it", but I just couldn't be arsed to do it anymore. I'm not really into unpaid sysadmin work :-)
Yeah, sure, what I meant by 'get it' is not how long have you been using the system, (I still don't get Windows), but whether you connected with the way the developers meant it to be used, i.e. if it became second nature.
I am just sharing an experience that I had it similar, but not anymore, I definitely don't find it requiring sysadmin amount of work to maintain, my daily routine is: read archlinux.org, pacman -Syu, pacdiff, very occasional manual step that took me 5mins - I know it may not be like that for everyone, but not everybody also has the issues you described, is my point.
Don't get me wrong, I definitely get the Arch way of doing things, if that's what you like and how you want your system to work.
My daily routine was exactly the same as yours, except I experienced several boot-breaking errors over the years, where I had to spend hours getting my system running again. I consider that a waste of time.
In contrast, Mint takes care of itself, which leaves me to get on with my life in peace.
Honestly, this was my experience in the first months with the distro, back in 2011, but then I started feeling like I 'know' Arch, like I understand how to use pacdiff, what news to pay attention to and what commands to run, as well as what not to forget to avoid trouble and honestly, it's been the most stable OS I've known.
So yes, there's a 'bump' you have to overcome with Arch, but once you 'get it', it becomes second nature.