Linux

Use what you like. In answer to your question though, my experience has been that Arch is super stable. I have had fewer problems with it than maybe any other distro before.

I update very frequently, multiple times per week. There is almost always something to update. Most of the time it is just before I wrap up. Sometimes it is while I am reading something. Often, it is just as I sit down ( if I have the time, I sometimes look into new features that have arrived ). According to Lemmy, this behaviour should lead to my system being down all the time and me getting nothing done. My system has been rock solid and productive.

Now it may sound like a lot of admin but it is a mindless one line command to update and it just works. For me, it is fast, unobtrusive, and reliable. I for sure spent more time looking for missing packages on other distros. I spent a lot of time finding ways to run newer versions on other distros. I spent a lot more time dealing with problems caused by multiples application sources on other distros. Like the reading example, I mostly update while I do other things so it is not actually taking any time.

I pretty much never see the need to use Flatpak on Arch for example. I for sure am not doing anything like PPAs. I do use the AUR heavily.

IMHO, Linux works best when everything is managed by the package manager. While I have never used Nix, Arch is the only system that has made that possible for me.

Well, I should be honest on this last point. I have added the CacheyOS repos to one system ( it is actually EndeavourOS but essentially Arch ). From those repos I run a binary pre-release of the new System76 COSMIC desktop. The same package is available in the AUR but would build from source there so the CacheyOS repo is just a convenience. Obviously this system is just recreational so I am taking more risk with the packages I am using. Still, other than the incomplete status of COSMIC, this system has also been rock solid. It is in my living room ( as opposed to office ) and so I use it quite a lot every day.

There is one thing that bugs me about Arch systems. If you do not update for a while, you will get two problems.

1 - you will likely get multiple packages which have been replaced or duplicated ( multiple sources for NodeJS as an example ) and you will be asked for each one which you want to use. The system will be fine but it is a bit annoying if there are a bunch at once.

2 - New GPG keys may have been added and you may have a chicken and egg problem where you cannot move ahead without installing the new keyring but do not have the right certs to do that. You can resolve this quickly but it sucks the first time it happens and you will be Googling. It is my number one complaint about Arch.

I have only run into the second problem above for systems that I have not updated in months but I have run into it so, again, I want to be honest. That said, I have had Arch systems that laid dormant for years which I was able bring right up to date. I had a laptop that was powered off for three years. I had to refresh the keyring and the update was gigs in size but it was completely up-to-date and solid as a rock at the end of it ( same update command that I use every day - “yay -Syu” ).

Ok, one other issue…

I use the AUR extensively including to install proprietary software like IntelliJ, Rider, Microsoft Edge, Postman, and BurpSuite. As a result, occasionally I get whacked with a massive update. I did not update my main system for two weeks and got hit with a 14 Gb update! That can be mitigated though.

Mostly I update with yay or paru which includes everything from the AUR. When hit with a big update, you can use pacman instead which updates just the stuff in the core repos ( not the AUR ). So you can put all the AUR stuff off until a better time. Nothing in the core repos is that big.

With yay, you can also select which individual packages to update. So, you can skip stuff like IDEA ( about 5 gigs on its own I think ) or something that is going to take ages to compile from source.

I prefer package management from the command-line. There is pacseek for a nice TUI. If you really want a GUI, both pamac-gtk3 and octopi are in the AUR.

While I have some pure Arch systems, I mostly use EndeavourOS these days. It is faster to install and I like the defaults, including that it installs yay by default ( providing out-of-the-box access to the AUR ). EOS used to default to Xfce. It uses KDE 6 now. The online installer gives you quite a few desktops to choose from. I do not thin that Hyprland is one of them but it can be installed easily after.

Anyway, I can only speak from my own experience but Arch does not break on me and I push it pretty hard. I keep saying I want to try something like Debian as the base with Arch in a Distrobox so I still get access to all the packages. I just have not bothered yet because Arch ( or EOS ) works so well for me.