I finally got back on the horse a few months ago after about a 10 year hiatus from the Linux world, and I am just cautious about what I install because I've borked many distro installs over the years. Since my DD is also for work, and I don't have the downtime to troubleshoot or reinstall because I went on a package install spree without doing my due diligence on what the packages I'm installing are actually doing, I'd rather take Flatpak for a spin through an Arch VM just to get a feel for it and any kinks I might encounter.
A lot has changed in the past decade, and while I'm amazed at the stability these days, I still err on the side of caution, and also don't want to fill up my install with a bunch of random stuff I don't actually need. Same reason I'm also cautious about using AUR. I know dependency hell has very much improved, but call it PTSD for lack of a better term.