Arch is not hard... at all. Everyone says it is hard but no one can cite why. There is always the option of using a traditional linux installer wizard and it installs just as easy as any other distro. Then the only difference is you have a different command for your package manager. It runs the same software. I'm tired of hearing that there are meaningful differences between these distros when the only major difference is "command install packagename" vs "different_command install packagename". Woah there. I think this is going to be too complicated for new users.
The only other major difference is arch ships the configs that the developers recommend as a default while ubuntu tries to be as aggressive with some of the software as they can be. My experience is sometimes this breaks thing (at least did back in the day) depending on updates and your hardware. This leaves you trouble shooting the most low level stuff. I've had to do more high level tech support for myself every year I've run Ubuntu than I have in 6 years of running Arch.
Maybe Arch users shout Arch because we know it's the easiest distro we've used and we want to save new users the headache that comes from accepting the BS marketing on Ubuntu as real. The more a distro tries to accomplish the more they are going to fail the more it is you who will hold the bag for fixing it. So the distro that does the least is actually the easiest one. If you pick manjaro or artix you get the install wizard and its as easy to install as Ubuntu but with less broken stuff once it is running.
Next time something breaks in your ubuntu just know that if you were running arch it would have never happened.
Arch is hard not just because of the installation, it's because of everything after. There are so many small things you expect your OS to have set up automatically that you might not even know exist that Arch expects you to do by hand. Arch doesn't enable TRIM on your SSDs by default, it has no firewall. It doesn't install microcode, leaving you open to many security exploits. It NEVER cleans old downloaded packages from it's cache, something you will only find out about after you start looking for where 300GB of your disk space went to. It requires specific arcane syntax commands to install and update packages. You seriously expect someone coming over from Windows and MacOS to do those things or even know they need to do them? I haven't used Ubuntu in a long time and wouldn't use it now but it's still an easy recommendation just because I know it has the least abrasions for a new user to encounter. After they learn how Linux works and feel comfortable, they themselves can branch out and try other distros.
I switched to Arch some months ago because I get better performance in games on Arch compared to Debian. But I wasn't aware microcode wasn't installed automatically. Thanks for pointing that out, I've installed it now.
Okay, I guess I've gotta play the crow here ... Is Arch really such a bad choice for a beginner these days? Obviously building it the "proper" way would be a bad idea, but there are tons of Arch-based distros with GUI-installers. I currently run Garuda on both my personal devices and the install process really couldn't have been easier, and almost everything worked out of the box. The stuff that needed tweaking was all minor and mostly related to this being my first foray into KDE in over a decade. Let's face it - that's a pretty high bar even on Windows systems these days.
Granted, the rolling release aspect means inevitably you're gonna get a borked update that you have to revert, so that's a stumbling point for a complete newbie. It's not like that doesn't sometimes happen on other distros though - or even Windows. On the other hand, the AUR means little or no manually compiling stuff. Plus, the best wiki in the community (even if you don't use Arch). And gaming (at least on AMD) is rock solid.
Hell, I have a fifteen-year-old intern at my work (through his school). He'd had almost no exposure to Linux when he started with us, so as a learning project I had him set up Arch with Hyprland from the console. The little bugger did find the install script, but even then he had to learn a bunch of stuff and still had a running system in about an afternoon.
ANYWAY, I'm not saying that Arch should necessarily be the first distro for most beginners, just that it's not as daunting as most people make it out to be.
Setting up a computer for Grandma? Mint.
Already something of a power-user in Windows? Depending on your use case, Arch is worth consideration.
Granted, the rolling release aspect means inevitably you’re gonna get a borked update that you have to revert, so that’s a stumbling point for a complete newbie. It’s not like that doesn’t sometimes happen on other distros though - or even Windows.
People post things like this constantly and I feel like I'm living on a different planet. I don't think I've ever heard of a Windows install needing to be reverted through no fault of the user.
I am a sysadmin and believe me when I say that happens. Mostly due to updates.
Within that updates that just plainly break things. E.g. deleting the users files. Or other updates which only break some PCs. (those are fun to diagnose) E.g. if the recovery partiton created by its own installer is suddenly to small. and I also had it more than a few times that Windows pulled in a driver "update" which broke things. One time it even tried to apply the wrong driver! I have now disabled all driver updates trough windows on all PCs I manage.
Rarely PCs also just suddenly refuse to boot, being caught in a recovery loop. After trying two times for hours to find the reason and only one success I don't care anymore and just restore a working backup in that case. Mind that (nearly) all users do not have admin rights.
On Linux? I had it that release upgrades broke things, but only once several years ago on the PCs where I wait till the official release is made. On my own ones I am often to feature hungry to wait until after the beta, and I know I can fix things.
I had one 12 year old PC where X11+KDE got unstable after a release upgrade, thankfully a switch to Wayland solved this.
Besides that? Never had any issue I didn't cause myself and never had a running system which suddenly broke.
Granted I do not administer as many Linux PCs as Windows ones. But there are a few, some of them also in the hands of users.
There are some updates that broke stuff on Windows. Like that one which broke all those HP printers for a lot of people.
The thing is that it is kind of impressive how little it happens seeing the sheer amount of users. And normally Microsoft is quite quick to release an other update to fix it.
I've had more windows updates breaking stuff than I had arch updates breaking stuff, that's for sure. I think it's frankly laughable that a paid OS has problems such as that.
I have never used Arch but I have had SEVERAL FUCKING TIMES Windows comppletely fuck up something in my system through updates. Thankfully it hasn't happened in my latest machine running Win10, but in my laptops one ofthenm literally died trying to upgrade versions, and I had to block ut from ever attempting it again.Nowadayas that same laptop is happily running Mint and testing Fedora.
How? Are you digging around in windows internals trying to do stuff? I mean if so you'd be better off with Linux anyways, but I'm curious how this happens.
It fells like we have some sort of natural difficulty to deal with choices, doesn't it? Even when choosing between equally good things, it isn't something we do so easily.
"Hey New User, shut up and come back when you've read the documentation for each component of every distro and studied how they interact with each other. I am too burned out from maintaining my rare and arcane DIY configuration to answer your stupid questions."
You're making a lot of unfounded assumptions here. Also, either your reading comprehension sucks or you're being deliberately obtuse by claiming I said any such thing.
Because debian is a vanilla distro that does as little as possible, so it isn't extra work to use it. Do you know what other distro tries to be as vanilla as possible. Arch. So if you just use the install wizard Debian and Arch are equal difficulty. AKA the easiest. Don't buy the Ubuntu marketing hype. Just because someone labels themselves the easiest doesn't mean it's true. Just because another distro is labeled hard doesn't mean it's true.
Absolutely not. Arch always releases updates, as soon as they are available. This means, that there isn't that much testing before the release. This can cause lots of problems for the end user. Debian tries to be the most stable Distribution in existence. They Accomplish this by testing a lot. This causes update to come not very often. Debian's strategy works.
This means, that there isn’t that much testing before the release. This can cause lots of problems for the end user.
Lol you're buying into the FUD. ubuntu doesn't test every possible combination of packages, nor do they test how updates actually impact the user. Generally updates are always good for users. They fix bugs. 99% of the time someone comes to a linux forum asking about an issue, the answer is "this was fixed in the latest kernel, try updating". But because they're using distros that use ancient, 3 year old kernels, they can't.
Unless you have a staging computer where you stage your updates, you're living in an illusion about "stability", and using ancient tools with ancient bugs for no reason
Yeah, but that's still not as long,as Debian's testing phase. You can't deny it. Updates frequently cause problems. I had this multiple times and literally every Arch User will tell you the same.
Go with OpenSuSE Tumbleweed or Fedora, because software updates roll in at a good pace. Stable, easy to use and configure.
Go with Arch or Manjaro only if you really want the bleeding-edge software versions. You can have some instability as a result, or not. Good luck.
Don't go with Debian, Ubuntu and likewise, only if you want to make some gymnastics to update your programs every major release. These are the most stable Linux distros.
If you want fairly bleeding edge, go with OpenSuSE Tumbleweed and you'll still have a stable system with no version update worries (well, technically, there's a version update every other day).
I want to go pick a fight with openSuse forums because the installer failed 3 times in different ways. I changed it up to different releases, Leap, etc... Never had issues like that with any other distro.
Hate saying it, but Ubuntu just works for me. I'd rather focus my computer configuration and maintenance efforts on clients rather than my own laptop. If I have to reinstall for whatever reason, its pretty easy because I'm already very familiar with the (shitty) installer, and I don't do much customizing because I'd rather not have to go through that every time I reinstall.
Granted I've never even bothered to run Arch, or any really other desktop distro for that matter. Ubuntu + Gnome looks nice, seems to just work, all I need to do is apt install nvidia drivers and firefox post-install and I'm up and running. I don't want to do work on my laptop, I want my laptop to enable me to do work.
I think you can install nvidia driver by clicking on "third party driver and codecs" check box during install? It should even register the secureboot key automatically.
Ubuntu installer is pretty good IMO, at least much better than the current fedora installer.
I haven't used ubuntu for a while, maybe these are outdated impressions.
I dont really fuck around with the GUI stuff tbh...I've always just done ubuntu-drivers autoinstall
I guess my issues with the installer have mostly stemmed around the software raid and manual partitioning. Simply installing on a single drive isnt bad.
I don't hate saying it. I have used Linux professionally and personally for 20 years now, and Ubuntu is just a solid choice for productivity. It has wide hardware support and even better user support. People hating on Ubuntu are Linux hipsters and their opinions can typically be dismissed.
There are many ideological reasons to hate ubuntu but I agree it was a solid choice and still is for people just wanting to get shit done without caring too much for the stuff underneath
Ideologically Ubuntu makes me cringe, but I also use Google and a host of other technologies that fuck my privacy, so I guess I have accepted the world we live in.
In the same way that I think it's noble when people try to live waste free, I think it's noble to use things like GrapheneOS, or selfhost all your services, or de-Google your tech. But it's unrealistic for all of the world to live waste-free or customize their tech so as to be private. In the end, the government needs to step in and force these giant-ass companies to behave better, because they are the primary forces pushing forward the destruction of the environment and personal privacy.
Among other things? They have a restrictive licensing, they’re a for-profit company, and though it’s now disabled by default (maybe, see for profit company bit,) they got into cahoots with Amazon for Spyware
They’ve always skeeved me out with their MS-like approach to UI.
Just an interesting thing in the community, how everything canonical does is immediately hate mongered by all relevant Linux media and Red Hat is given free reign
So. Fun story. My dad is a Unix SysOps guy. I grew up on Red Hat. he went out to REHL's HQ in Raleigh, NC, to get pitched their enterprise services for his org. (they were soliciting bids from several places,). In any case, he came back with, for him, a new hostility towards red hat. ("I regret setting you up with red hat..." lots of other comments that could be described as "fuck them", he's far less crude than I am.)
the most hilarious part is the some of the swag was this nasty-ass 1 pound chocolate bar that they made a big deal out of. he put it out at his office and not even the office grazers that would eat 3-week old pizza left in the fridge would touch it.
It was a bit weasel-y of debian, but like, I understand branding issues being “important”; the issue with Ubuntu and branding is you can’t do that. You have to get approval to repackage/brand Ubuntu.
For profit companies are solely motivated by profit.
Inevitably they will choose profit over what’s right. In the meantime, there’s nothing wrong per se, but, for example, I don’t trust Canonical to not try and slip unity-lens or whatever it was back in all quiet like.
Or, duck duck go to not quietly expand what it tracks and sells on you. (Mobile browser app caved for Google money,)
RH doesn’t allow sharing of the spec files which generate the RHEL rpm packages. The program’s code is still under whatever license it is licensed under.
Besides all the RHEL code is public and upstream in CentOS, which makes more sense anyway.
That's not quite true from my understanding. You can exercise your rights under the licenses but in the Red Hat terms of service it says they will terminate your service contract if you do. Also the downstream source code isn't in a public git repo.
I'm an arch user myself, chose it because i wanted to get familiar with command line and force myself to learn a bit more about linux. Since choosing a DE was also paralyzing, I opted for i3 and now use sway and learned more about config files. Great part about linux is you can try and use what you like and works for you.
Was that the joke? I don't know if I was misunderstanding, but I thought the loud crow was supposed to be a new Linux user complaining that the few-mentioned easy-to-use distro's being too many options.
No. It's someone responding to questions for what distros to try as a new user. That's why it starts with "new user?" to identify the subject of who it's speaking to. The crow is giving it's own advice for harder distros that a Windows user would switch to.
I've only tried EndeavourOS with the i3 wm, it was better than setting it up myself from scratch, but it still left a lot to be desired (in particular; no way to deal with external displays as far as i could tell, except using xrandr)
But i guess it's more focused on the desktop manager options?
Aren't there any applications that can automatically manage displays? Many dms let you cycle through "only primary, "only secondary", "mirrored" "side by side", is that something that has to be built in to the wm/dm?
Is that something arandr can do? I couldn't get it to do anything useful, so i ended up writing some scripts on top of xrandr to do it
Based on my search when i looked into arandr earlier, and also my search now, it cannot :( looks like it's just a graphical interface for xrand
But looks like there's a different project, autorandr, that looks promising, it won't automatically run when a display is connected or disconnected, but that's easy enough to do with an udev rule or something
Then I misunderstood your question. I'm pretty sure you can do all of these things:
"only primary, "only secondary", "mirrored" "side by side"
But it's not like in a DE where you jump through those modes with a keybinding. Instead you generate an xrandr config. It can preserve the position if you unplug an extra monitor and then plug it back in.
If you need that quickswitch functionality, you can generate configs for all of those scenarios and just use a script to cycle through them.
You could also use built in wm functionality. For example you can create modes (I think that's what it's called) in i3. Press a shortcut, it opens up a menu, and you can choose your option (load an xrandr config).
Another option is to use Xfce or KDE, and replace the default wm. It's the best option if you're lazy about setting everything up. That's why I'm currently running Xfce + I3. That functionality is useless for me as the Xfce version doesn't seem to allow you to customise those configurations. The regular display configuration is pretty useful though.
Quickswitch or automatic switch to a different profile, i often found myself enabling an external display and disabling the built-in one, then when packing down my laptop i forgot to manually configure the built in, meaning when i got home i had a laptop with a blank screen,
Sometimes i was able to log in, open a terminal and enable the screen, other times i would have to reboot it. Something that could automatically enable the builtin if no external display is connected would've gone a long way for my usecase (my attempts at writing scripts for that never worked from what i recall, something got messed up when going to sleep)
Doesn't xfce use a dm? What kind of display configuration does it give? A gui for manually configuring the layout or something more?
Here's an extremely simple solution, just bind this to a shortcut:
#!/bin/bash
if [[ -z "${MONITOR}" || "${MONITOR}" == "internal" ]]; then
export MONITOR="external"
~/dotfiles/xrandr/external.sh
else
export MONITOR="internal"
~/dotfiles/xrandr/internal.sh
fi
and just autostart internal.sh
I'd most likely keep it like that and go on with my day, but here's an ai response for automating it:
To trigger a script when an external monitor is connected or disconnected, you can use udev, the device manager for the Linux kernel.
Here's a step-by-step plan:
Create a script that will be triggered when the monitor is connected or disconnected. For example, /usr/local/bin/monitor-hotplug.sh. Make sure to make it executable with chmod +x /usr/local/bin/monitor-hotplug.sh.
#!/bin/bash
export DISPLAY=:0
export XAUTHORITY=/home/username/.Xauthority # replace "username" with your actual username
xrandr | grep "HDMI1 connected" # replace "HDMI1" with your actual monitor identifier
if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
# commands to run when the monitor is connected
else
# commands to run when the monitor is disconnected
fi
Create a udev rule that will trigger the script. For example, /etc/udev/rules.d/95-monitor-hotplug.rules.
Now, whenever an external monitor is connected or disconnected, the monitor-hotplug.sh script will be triggered.
Please note that you'll need to replace "HDMI1" with your actual monitor identifier, which you can find by running xrandr without any arguments. Also, replace "username" with your actual username.
And here's an example of using modes in i3 if you need to switch between multiple configurations:
set $mode_system System (k) lock, (l) logout, (u) suspend, (h) hibernate, (r) reboot, (s) shutdown
mode "$mode_system" {
bindsym k exec --no-startup-id ~/dotfiles/.config/i3/scripts/i3exit.sh lock, mode "default"
bindsym l exec --no-startup-id ~/dotfiles/.config/i3/scripts/i3exit.sh logout, mode "default"
bindsym u exec --no-startup-id ~/dotfiles/.config/i3/scripts/i3exit.sh suspend, mode "default"
bindsym h exec --no-startup-id ~/dotfiles/.config/i3/scripts/i3exit.sh hibernate, mode "default"
bindsym r exec --no-startup-id ~/dotfiles/.config/i3/scripts/i3exit.sh reboot, mode "default"
bindsym s exec --no-startup-id ~/dotfiles/.config/i3/scripts/i3exit.sh shutdown, mode "default"
# back to normal: Enter or Escape
bindsym Return mode "default"
bindsym Escape mode "default"
}
bindsym control+mod1+X mode "$mode_system"
Doesn’t xfce use a dm?
Display manager?
A gui for manually configuring the layout or something more?
Basic stuff you'd expect, and it has a quick switch keybinding to go between a few basic configurations.
Display manager
I thought the d stood for Desktop, but i'm thinking of de, i see i've been mixing up terms, i've also been under the incorrect understanding that window managers and desktop environments were mutually exclusive, e.g. a desktop environment like xfce would conflict with a window manager like i3
Those scripts look cleaner than mine, perhaps i should give it another go, i'm currently on ubuntu, but many of the packets being 15 years out of date is starting to get annoying, i miss aur with its [xxx]-git packages
X11 DEs have a built in wm. For example xfce has something like xfce-wm. If you disable its autostart and replace it with a different one like I3, you get the best of both worlds.
You can't do that in Wayland because compositors are a monolith.
i'm currently on ubuntu, but many of the packets being 15 years out of date is starting to get annoying
Use an external package manager. For simplicity I suggest flatpak or snap. I prefer nix, but the setup is more complicated. That way you've got a rock solid system, but fresh or bleeding edge userland packages.
Endeavour does not aim to be used friendly, it just aims to make Arch faster to install. After that you're on your own just as much as you'd be on Arch.
Yeah I do. "On your own" is used very loosely here. You get a graphical installer, you pick from a list of DEs or WMs, make sure you want all the default software, done. You don't have to do the Arch thing, which is the hard part, and you still get an Arch desktop. And once Arch and your environmemt are installed, it's so much more user friendly than Ubuntu or Debian, you're "on your own" with any Linux system once it's installed and working, it's not like you have to dig into the guts of the system just to use it with any of them.
I installed Debian with XFCE a while back and it didn't even have curl installed. Ubuntu tries to force you to use snaps. I installed EndeavorOS, I haven't had to do anything extra except install the programs I want to use personally, all the graphical and terminal utilities you're going to need are just there and work the way you expect them to.
Alright so I got a steam deck and that seems cool. Windows has sucked for awhile and now it blows too so can I just install the steamdeck’s version of linux on my PCs too? Or do I choose a different distro? Or uhhhhhhhhhhhh wtf do I do I just wanna play games without being spied on and advertised at
MintLinux and Pop!OS are normally the two front-runners for new users. Basically, if you use Steam and you don't play online-only games with bad implementations of anti-cheat software, you are good to game on either.
Make a USB that you can "live boot" from, so you can test out how they work with your hardware before you actually install the OS. Generally speaking, Mint works better with AMD, and Pop! works better with Nvidia.
Awesome, thanks for the guide links, definitely bookmarking this whole post haha. The Nvidia vs AMD thing is good to know too, I scored a great deal a few years back on a RTX card and I really want that thing working properly if possible
It's only a general rule. In my experience, Nvidia has kinda been all over the place on how Linux-friendly they are. Do a couple searches on the exact card you have, you might be lucky.
I hope you have fun with finding what works best for you and your hardware!
Fair enough, and that is a bit of my concern, Nvidia doesn’t seem to be associated with being Linux friendly. Thanks for the advice, I wouldnt have thought to search on the specific card. This is gonna take some experimenting I think
Don't know how it's going to go for you, but Mint has been going really well for me gaming-wise on an Alienware with Nvidia RTX. Pretty much all the Steam games I care about work, and all my Blizzard games through Lutris. All through simple GUIs, and if you like the Windows feel and setup, there's a Windows 10 theme you can try out, and tutorials on how to get a Windows style mouse cursor too. Again - all up to you, but it worked really well for me and is amazingly customizable. Just... remember to do Timeshift backups regularly, just in case. You never know if you'll need one.
If you like traditional desktop approach, just go with Linux Mint. If you wanna try something different, go with PopOS. You can always use Steam's Big Picture mod if you want Steam Deck UI.
Obviously the distro choices are limitless but it's a good idea to start with one of these.
Other comment made great points on MintOS and PopOS for beginning a Linux journey.
SteamOS isn't available for a full PC release (that I am aware of), but Bazzite was made to be a full-distro alternative to SteamOS. I haven't tried it myself yet, but it has good reception from what I see.
Linux Mint is very easy to pick up, though, and I highly recommend for someone coming from Windows. It is fully functional through GUI and has several different flavors for the desktop environment. I'm a fan of KDE, but Cinnemon was also very nice. A version of KDE Plasma is what SteamOS 3.0 uses. I'm not as big of a fan of GNOME, but a lot of people love it as a mor elegant, modern desktop environment.
Bazzite is pretty good, as are Nobara and ChimeraOS. I've got HoloISO (SteamOS reimplementation) running and it's pretty ok. It does what I need but I wouldn't necessarily recommend it due to the Bluetooth issues I've had and the on again/off again support.
Funny enough, instead of fixing the Bluetooth issues I just wrote a script a week or two ago that runs on startup. It removes btusb and btintel then reloads them. I hate janky fixes like that but I don't have the time or energy to tinker with operating systems anymore.
Archlinux is very similar to steamdeck so i recommend either that or EndevourOS. Lutris + Wine-GE lets you play basically any game, from Windows or other hardware, on linux so i recommend that
I'd use Arch if only my GPU wouldn't just die in the middle of a game and I'd have to restart the whole system. So unfortunately im forced to game on Windows
GPU is an RX590 and i can't for the life of me get it to work on Linux as a whole rn.
Arch isn't a bad choice for a new Linux user who was a power user on Windows. You get to actually know what's installed on your system which can really help during the inevitable troubleshooting, though it's definitely a trial by fire when it comes to manual install and setting up the environment.
Recommending Gentoo to a new user though is a war crime.
Why not recommend Manjaro then? The benefits of Arch without all the drawbacks.
For beginners it's probably best to give them an OS they can actually use and then have them find out stuff. Starting off with a troubleshooting experience before being able to use the OS is rather demotivating.
Manjaro is a potential time bomb, delayed repos and AUR don't always interact well. EndeavourOS is the better Arch fork, especially for beginners that need a smooth introduction.
Last time I installed EndeavourOS I had to connect to the wifi through the terminal. That's a surefire way to get a beginner to stop installing right there so I would not recommend it.
My very first distro was Manjaro actually - I tried it twice but there would always be some graphics related issue I would encounter that I couldn't troubleshoot as a beginner (even though I'd spend a week looking for a solution on forums), and I'd move back to Windows. Finally getting the courage to try out Arch which was considered the "big scary meme distro" was what made me stay with Linux.
The biggest thing for me was that I actually knew what was installed on my system and what the function most of the major programs served (things like xorg, multilib graphics drivers, pipewire/pulseaudio, desktop environments/window managers), so whenever I encountered an issue or wanted to customize something, I would sort of know where to start looking.
Of course, all this depends on the person - not all power users are the same. For me, arch worked best but someone else might gravitate towards fedora, debian or whatever else and their way of doing things.
NOBODY wants to have to sit through a multi-hour YouTube video just to install something.
I'm a Linux user with 20+ years of experience who has done LFS, compiled kernels for fun and put together their own mini-distro and I don't want to install Arch.
That's not how you teach people Linux. That's not how you teach people anything, let alone difficult stuff.
Beginners being told to use Arch is like telling a person "you might like some fresh air" and then taking them deep into the mountains, putting them in front of a vertical cliff face and telling them "start climbing".
Any unsuspecting person bring tricked into installing Arch would be well within their rights to say "fuck you all with a rusty spoon" and then refuse to hear the word "Linux" for another decade.
The worst part is that the install would be the least of their problems. Assuming they have a saint's patience and make it through, then what? They're now a complete beginner stuck on a distro for advanced users. Did a 3 hour install make them an advanced Linux user? No, it didn't. So what's the point?
Honestly never used tutorial videos. That sounds like a horrible way to learn. So slow and filled with unexplained steps you have to hunt for to understand.
Just follow the wiki it takes like 20min to an hour to get to the desktop based on your comfort and experience with computers. Like 10 minutes if you know what your doing, five minutes if you just want a basic system that boots and connects to the internet.(No desktop).
I used kde on my arch system hassle free for years, I really don't get the stereotype. If you constantly tinker with your system I get it but that's true for any Linux system. I also thought having to role a package back was a rare but unique problem for arch until I had to do it on Debian and fedora.
I learned arch out of necessity because at the time no other distro would install on my desktop thanks to poor support for Nvidia graphics and fedora being fedora broke almost instantly after the installer.(I've always had bad luck with fedora) I'd say you really have to live with arch to understand how painless it is to use daily.
Gentoo will probably be better if you’re using AUR, and Gentoo recently started shipping binary packages which can be mixed and matched with compiled software. 😄