If you're willing to learn some things and jump through some hoops to get the ultimate Linux setup on your desktop/laptop, you should check out NixOS. It's fundamentally designed to solve some of the problems I think the author of this post aimed to solve, and you can set it up without forking other operating systems.
The main downside for NixOS from my perspective is that its configuration language is just a small jump away from being trivial, and some things don't feel very polished. That said I do run it on my desktop, and setting it up was less work than for example setting up an ArchLinux machine (although setting up an ArchLinux machine is a bit more fun as you get to learn all these low level things)
I tried doing that in the past and went back to Arch instead.
My problems (2-3 years ago, I think?) were mostly due to laptop related stuff that wasn't packaged (i.e.: A lot more work to get started) and important (for me) packages being seriously outdated: Again work to get my system up and running.
So it boiled down to a huge amount of package maintenance and felt like that'd be something I'd need to continue doing for as long as I'm using NixOS vs just updating my distro of choice.
I'd try NixOS again for a server. I wouldn't recommend it for a desktop/laptop though.
I can second that, I think switching from Arch -> NixOS was far too much complexity at once. I've been considering using Guix as a package manager on Arch, but it would require a fresh install to avoid conflicts.
> but it would require a fresh install to avoid conflicts.
Not really! Nix basically only touches /nix/..., which Pacman doesn't mess around with, so there are no file conflicts.
Nix packages are generally hard-coded to use the specific libraries/external tools that they are built again, so Arch packages won't interfere with Nix packages.
Nix also doesn't expose dynamic libraries or executables from dependencies, so the only vector for conflict in the other direction is if you have your Nix profile before /bin in $PATH, you have installed the same executable with both package managers, and some Arch program doesn't work with the executable from the Nix version.
The main downside for NixOS from my perspective is that its configuration language is just a small jump away from being trivial, and some things don't feel very polished. That said I do run it on my desktop, and setting it up was less work than for example setting up an ArchLinux machine (although setting up an ArchLinux machine is a bit more fun as you get to learn all these low level things)