For a long time, I used Debian. I still run it on my office laptop. It is hard not to respect a distro with that kind of stubborn integrity, quietly holding up half the internet without ever caring about being cool.
Debian users have the energy of someone who drives a 1998 Volvo with 450,000 km on the clock, changes the oil on schedule, and looks at you like you are insane if you suggest buying a new car. This one runs fine. A computer is an appliance, not an adrenaline rush.
Naturally, I stayed far away from Arch. Everything I heard made it sound like an exhausting hobby: unstable, fragile, and demanding constant babysitting.
Then Debian 13 arrived and broke my audio on the pc and laptop.
I tried to fix it properly. When that failed, I gave up and wrote a shell alias called fixsound. Every time I had a Zoom meeting or wanted to play music, I had to run it first.
It worked, but it was a pathetic little ritual. It let me pretend everything was fine while I spent my day tiptoeing around my own machine.
Two weeks ago, I finally got fed up and installed EndeavourOS.
It turns out Arch is not a grenade waiting to go off. EndeavourOS gives you a clean starting point without hiding how the system actually works. You manage the machine yourself, keep backups, read the update notes, and know what you have installed.
Two weeks in, the system is dead quiet. Zoom works. Music works, everything is fine. I finally deleted the fixsound alias.
The old Volvo had a great run, but it is nice to drive something that can stream the latest music.