I found Arch Linux to be less maintenance that Debian/Ubuntu, but then again I need to tweak every aspect of my system and both Debian and Ubuntu keep getting in my way. For example Firefox now requires snap on Ubuntu systems, and Debian requires that I maintain my own version of Pipewire if I want decent sound on my earbuds. Also Apt/dpkg does seem to break a lot.
I also had issues with Manjaro and SteamOS due to system packages being a version or two behind vanilla Arch, which breaks things when you install AUR packages. That being said I have used both Garuda Linux and CachyOS and I’ve liked both. They get that balance between not requiring that I setup everything myself, while not getting in my way when I want to tinker.
Most of my Arch experience is with SteamOS, but thankfully it does seem that once you get your desktop environment running it’s pretty easy to deal with software there via the graphical package manager, though I’m not really doing anything crazy other than some add-on packages for Minecraft, Emu and the like.
I’ve been a pretty strong supporter of Debian, but I’ve definately run into issues where Stable = behind on the packages needed for the hardware/software I want, whereas Ubuntu’s continual pushing of Snap and intrusive BS is just irritating. I often end up with Mint for the more-decent-than-Debian but mostly snap-free experience, but for my next hardware cycle I am considering Arch given most of the “support” documentation mentions running on such.
SteamOS is easy to deal with if you stick to using Flatpak. I found out the hard way when installing yay that since their packages are a little behind, it wouldn’t compile. The problem was either pacman or one of it’s dependencies was out of date according to makepkg. So I tried to update them manually and broke the whole system. Plus SteamOS overrides changes to the root filesystem when it updates, which undos all my hard work tweaking the system, which I find infuriating.
Yeah the base OS seems pretty much centered around pretty fixed images etc for updates, but thankfully most of what I need can live happily in user-land either under the homedir or detachable storage
I found Arch Linux to be less maintenance that Debian/Ubuntu, but then again I need to tweak every aspect of my system and both Debian and Ubuntu keep getting in my way. For example Firefox now requires snap on Ubuntu systems, and Debian requires that I maintain my own version of Pipewire if I want decent sound on my earbuds. Also Apt/dpkg does seem to break a lot.
I also had issues with Manjaro and SteamOS due to system packages being a version or two behind vanilla Arch, which breaks things when you install AUR packages. That being said I have used both Garuda Linux and CachyOS and I’ve liked both. They get that balance between not requiring that I setup everything myself, while not getting in my way when I want to tinker.
Most of my Arch experience is with SteamOS, but thankfully it does seem that once you get your desktop environment running it’s pretty easy to deal with software there via the graphical package manager, though I’m not really doing anything crazy other than some add-on packages for Minecraft, Emu and the like.
I’ve been a pretty strong supporter of Debian, but I’ve definately run into issues where Stable = behind on the packages needed for the hardware/software I want, whereas Ubuntu’s continual pushing of Snap and intrusive BS is just irritating. I often end up with Mint for the more-decent-than-Debian but mostly snap-free experience, but for my next hardware cycle I am considering Arch given most of the “support” documentation mentions running on such.
SteamOS is easy to deal with if you stick to using Flatpak. I found out the hard way when installing yay that since their packages are a little behind, it wouldn’t compile. The problem was either pacman or one of it’s dependencies was out of date according to makepkg. So I tried to update them manually and broke the whole system. Plus SteamOS overrides changes to the root filesystem when it updates, which undos all my hard work tweaking the system, which I find infuriating.
Yeah the base OS seems pretty much centered around pretty fixed images etc for updates, but thankfully most of what I need can live happily in user-land either under the homedir or detachable storage