I had a similar experience, used Arch for awhile got tired of random things breaking, then I overcorrected and switched to Debian, thinking that infrequent changes would mean less breakage. That came with its own problems with things not working, especially if you let Debian fall out of date and it becomes un-upgradable. I also landed on Ubuntu LTS for my Linux needs, reasonably up-to-date, longer support cycles (a decade for security) than Debian versions, allowing me to be lazier than I could otherwise get away with managing other Linux distros.

However, the Steam Deck only has three main hardware configurations and Valve presumably has a team dedicated to making sure it runs correctly. So Arch may be a really good value proposition for them.