Once ago, I spent a few hours during the night installing Arch, painfully managed to set most of stuff working and then... formatted it the hell out. Just as you say, my computer and my OS are my tools too, and tools only. I need to get my shit done, not spend all days long quircking every basic detail just to make it work. Even if my disk crashes I can set up a fully configured and working Debian with all most needed software, repos downloaded and ready to do real work in one hour flat. And if I wanted real challenge and had way too much free time, I'd probably try LFS. Or shoot myself in the foot.

If you don't like the way Ubuntu went, go with Debian (sid if you like the warm feeling of having the newest stuff).