Phil Scott said:
Won't argue with you there. Out of interest, did you submit new package definitions to the AUR for stuff you were missing?
No--I was in over my head with Arch. (Went crying back to Ubuntu after breaking my system a few times. My PC is also my livelihood.)
Don't blame you. I wrote a few Arch definitions for personal use but hated the experience and generally don't like the philosophy behind most package managers.
But you must know the open source retort whenever you have a problem: why haven't
you fixed it? If Arch has packages missing that you need, why haven't you contributed them?
This retort is a bit unfair for most people, but it highlights that open source is often a collaborative endeavor where user and developer are blurred, and where the user has neither a warranty nor a deserved sense of entitlement when things are missing.
This is not to call you entitled. It is to agree that there is a mismatch between the interests of the OP to say that linux is now ready for end users, and Arch folk who say you better muck in if you want a computer that works to your demands. I am with the Arch folk, and will tell end users to run for the hills rather than sink in our quagmires.
I joked earlier that I don't want a popular operating system, but I was only serious. I don't want my OS to be popular with end users, because I think there are still big open problems in this space that really interest me, and I want to be hacking on them. So I also want the average member in my user community to have a decent understanding of the distro's internals so we are more likely to be able to solve those problems and help each other when stuck. I want feature requests to come from users who understand the technical challenges if they can't immediately see the implementation path, and who are prepared to code. I'm also currently on a distro where I expect the overwhelming majority of users to have written package definitions, if not submitted them to master.
These are all irrelevant to you, no doubt. It is personal hobbyist interest, and I wouldn't encourage you to switch. I do wonder, though, to what extent my attitude is reflected historically in open source communities. The OP, phands, has done kernel hacking, for instance, which puts him in an elite demographic, and one that I am led to believe contains a lot of passionate volunteers.