I use Artix now - love it because it is so easy to make packages or at least update one that you need to update for some reason. RPMs are super super difficult much of the time.

I think the most horrible bit is selinux - that really upped the level of difficulty a lot. I'm also really fed up with Fedora's frequent releases - so hard to keep your machine current because upgrading usually only works properly once or twice and then you need to do a reinstall. That might be harsh - maybe 3 times but you still end up having to do it or lose updates.

For me this feels liked they've reached a peak of complexity. Now there are flatpacks and other things to torture us with and it's obviously not just them.

I found something that suits me at last and am typing to you from it now. Rolling updates so I NEVER have to do a full upgrade - it's so liberating. I can make choices like not having systemd - I use dinit and it's fine. Development packages are always installed so I want to build something from source and I never have to worry about whether the header files I need are there.

So far I cannot find a negative. OK it was a nuisance to make pipewire start automatically and I probably haven't done it right yet - not good for any new users - but that's it.