As a long-time Arch user, I can say that the switch is not for the faint of heart. Arch won't do anything automatically, including installing basic things like a window manager or a browser - Arch is more of a "build your own OS" experience.

On the flip side, this is incredibly empowering. If something breaks, you can just fix it, since you were the one who put it together in the first place. That's a big jump from Ubuntu, where everything just works, but you have less control. Arch is worth it if you think of it as a future investment, rather than a short-term easy fix.

Good warning, and I agree on the learning curve. I've been using ubuntu mainly as a convenience, and it's amusing how frequently I refer to the Arch wiki (which is excellent[0]) to diagnose/fix ubuntu-related issues. I've wanted more fine-grained control over my daily system for a long time, and this snap debacle is the final straw for me.

0. https://wiki.archlinux.org/

Just remember that Arch is a rolling release distribution so the updates you do get will be bleeding edge. I recommend setting up Timeshift and always backing up your system before updating; if you’re using BTRFS it’s instant (although ext4 is practically instant on modern NVMe drives).

Also consider Manjaro if you want an Arch-based distro but don’t want to go through the trouble of manually setting everything up on first install. I’ve been running the KDE edition as my main OS and it’s fantastic!

+1 for Manjaro.

I always shill for it.

It's like Ubuntu if Ubuntu were rolling (so much faster drivers and DE features, but nerfed delivery to minimize breakage and still really user-friendly, with a GUI kernel and driver switcher) and if instead of PPAs it had a big repo that just had everything on it (the AUR, which Manjaro's GUI package manager, Pamac, works with once the setting's toggled).

if you like Ubuntu and stability go debian. edit: the downvotes are fascinating. if you do LIVE performances and even remotely care about stability Arch is the last distro you should use. its a great distro but its bleeding edge by design. part of the fun of arch. contrarian views should be expressed with words if possible because id like to know what universe some of you are from..

I didn't downvote you, but the appeal of Arch to me is the extreme customization. Sometimes I need to do really funky setups. That said, the stability of debian is also very appealing for the very reasons you stated.

i saw it explained once to someone else that arch is more cutting edge, than bleeding edge. it's not like you're getting beta software or anything with arch - it just updates very frequently. it's a hacker's OS at the end of the day; the culture is that you're buying in to the high ownership/control of your machine, ergo you're going to put a higher effort into at least searching wiki/forums/main page for issues.

you can actually get a very stable system in the same way you would any other OS: install only the packages you can live with. you can install, say, xmonad and no DE and have a slick, solid, low resource dev setup, whereas ubuntu comes with some goofy ubuntu software store that's not removable (or wasn't when i last used it) - one wonders what other "goodies" are in there, esp. after amazon search behavior change. remember that deleted code is debugged code: the more spartan, the less chance for issues. so arch's actually a plus there.

FWIW my boomer parents run arch on 2 different desktops solidly, without much sysadmin work from me other than a few pacman upgrades whenever i remember to VPN back in, perhaps biweekly on average. yes the occasional breakage happens, see above re: website/forum/etc.

debian stable was OK as firefox was fairly regularly updated for vulnerabilities, but the actual version number was lagging a fair bit behind. ubuntu LTS just seemed like a worse debian. ubuntu non-LTS is a non-starter: probably 50% of the dist-upgrades i ran ended up failing and basically needing a clean reinstall for anything not in /home, so it's fairly admin hostile in that sense.

I'd recommend NixOS instead. Trying different desktops is easy as changing the config and doing a `sudo nixos-rebuild test`.

Arch with its rolling release model is prone to breakage. Every upgrade gets you closer to having to reinstall everything from scratch. On contrast, NixOS is transactional and if something breaks you can switch to a previous version easily.

(I actually went from Arch to NixOS, after using Arch for about 3 years).

I've looked into Nix, and I like what it's accomplishing in principle with atomic upgrades/rollbacks, but I felt very frustrated by their clunky package "DSL." I use quotes because it appears that they are trying to encompass an entire programming language worth of constructs. Why they didn't go with an existing real programming/scripting language is beyond me.

Try pop os. It doesn't come with snap despite being based on ubuntu 20. They use flatpak in their store.

Personally I don't want FlatPak either except maybe for 1 or 2 apps where the sandboxing actually makes sense. It's still a waste of resources just to appease lazy maintainers.

Ubuntu went totally overboard with their snaps, putting everything in it trying to force it to become a standard. But FlatPak is not great either even though it is an open standard.

It's nice for the 1 or 2 niche apps that aren't available any other way, but for the most part I prefer normal packages.