I've been using Arch since ~8 years and at least for me updates breaking stuff is rare, and every time it happens there was a simple easy work around the problem (like downgrading for a day or two at which point the bug was fixed).

Through without question a major reason why the (few) problems I did ran into haven't been a problem was due to my understanding of Linux.

The is the misconception that Arch is bleeding edge, it's not. It's the latest stable releases of the software it composed of. And at least for my use cast the amount of headache it reduces by doing so far outweighs the amount of problems I ran into (which are in my experience few, and iff you have the necessary skills normally easy to work around).

I believer you, what I dislike is those people that push everyone into Arch and omit to add the things you added.

I bet that a vanilla LTS where you only update for security reason is more stable and risk free.

Tbh. I would never directly(1) recommend arch to anyone for a simple reason, it requires some linux/unix skills to be worth it.

If you have the skills I don't need to directly recommend it to you, you already know it.

If you don't know it you likely don't have the necessary skills.

Through by being opinionated about the choice of packages and way of setup and adding a QA Team, more CI and slightly delayed (non-security) updates (like 1 day or two) you probably could produce a grate experience even for casual users. Hm, but then as a company producing a custom Linux distro is rarely worth it and often special purpose enough to not care about the benefits this approach would bring.

(1): But still indirectly advertise it.

I don't think a rolling release will ever work for casual users, there are too many configurations of hardware and things you might not know people are using, some package update could affect someone printer and you cost this person a job opportunity.

You would at least have to block the AUR on such a distro, there are too many patched kernels/packages there and too many recommendations to install X from the AUR.

Then you have the GUI chnanges in apps, it is too frustrating to make the user learn weekly some new GUI workflow because app X decided to improve stuff.

Arch has a great use case for people that actually need latest stuff and for the people that just really want the latest stuff to satisfy their appetite of checking new features.

Arch probably has a lower share of GNOME users than your average distro.

I’ve been using the Arch Linux Archive as a way to stick with a known stable system for a few weeks until I have time to dedicate to a system upgrade and correcting any issues that arise.

How do you undo an app or subsystem after an update you don't like?

For example I upgrade my IDE but not in place, I keep previous version just in case the new one is buggy or they again moved shit around. For my main system I am on LTS and I upgrade if there is a need and not to get high on version numbers. For example I tested new versions of kernels and video drivers and end up on what feels right for me and stopped there. Sometimes the new video driver is more unstable then the older ones so I would never do a driver update without having a good reason and time to evaluate it.

Arch keeps a package cache of old packages, if you want to forever.

So installing old packages is trivial (iff you had them installed before).

>So installing old packages is trivial

I don believe this is true for ANY package(like install an old KDE4 app on your KDE5 system)

It depends how much older.

Like just a few days, weeks or continue to use a older no longer maintained version of a package because you don't like the new version.

I (now) guess you mean the later in which case, yes it's not trivial as it's not really supported by anyone anywhere. Neither the original software developers (which replaced it with a newer version), the package maintainers/Linux distro (which also moved on as the older version doesn't get updates), other packages interacting with ti (which expect a newer version), etc.

So while it might suck, I would recommend to simply not do so as it's not worth the risk and headaches it brings you. At least not as long as you don't find enough people to do a fork and maintain that fork.

Still undoing you last update is often as simple as just installing the package from the cache, and then you would need to pin it/make pacman ignore it (and then it probably will brake sooner or later depending how much it relies on specific system libraries in specific versions being available).

I disagree, when you release a new version of something distros like Debian or Ubuntu will backport the security fixes but not backport the new features and the new bugs.

As an example we are a group of people with some eye disabilities but not completely blind, we use an old application Jovie for KDE, this app was removed from latest KDE and replaced with something with lot less feature. We are compiling this old app from source and at least for this old LTS distros we can get both Qt4/KDE4 and Qt5/KDE5 libs installed. So imagine people with disabilities doing an update one day and poof your must have thing is gone and you can't use your system anymore and some person on the internet will tell you that you are doing it wrong and should not use anythng else then the latest version of stuff because the developers do not support old stuff.