because i am incapable of processing information without writing about it
I'd been using OpenSUSE Tumbleweed for a bit and enjoying it quite a bit but started to feel some itchiness and so when my Gnome DE got a bit borked from fucking around with i3wm, instead of rolling back a snapshoot or reinstalling TW I decided to go back to EndeavourOS and we'll see how it feels long term but I'm pretty sure it's the right decision.
I think Tumbleweed is genuinely a very good distro and it fills a really great niche of like an "easy intermediate" distro in that it's not as purely focused on being as friendly as possible like Pop or Mint, it's still quite easy to get rolling with and very usable outside of the box. The automatically configured snapshotting also makes it very safe because there's few problems you can't recover from.
My biggest problem had to do with its nature as a non-standard distro. I don't actually think this would bother most casual users - most major and standard software is available on SUSE or easy to get going. However I got irritated with more technical stuff - I had to do some weird troubleshooting to get both org-mode and my keyboard mapper to work on SUSE and while that's not a huge deal, it becomes annoying when you're exploring software that doesn't have a version that accounts for SUSE. Similarly there's not a ton of extended documentation. Which, again, not an issue for most regular usage but I got kinda annoyed at having to look up tips for other distros and then convert them.
This is particularly significant because it's a direct contrast to Arch which has a massive amount of compatible software and basically unmatched documentation and support resources. Arch is scarier than other distros to some degree but when you're doing technical stuff it's actually often simpler. Which, I suppose, is the core premise of the distro.
I also strongly appreciate Arch's minimalism as someone who increasingly just wants my computer to do computer things as quickly as possible. EndeavourOS does a great job of giving you just enough for a functional system while still making it very clear What Is On Your Computer and allowing you to add what additions you need. This is also helpful because it makes it easier to avoid the trouble you can get into by accidentally installing two conflicting bluetooth providers or whatever.
Another small point was that i've now switched to i3wm as my main desktop and EndeavourOS has a pretty nice default customization for it (if a bit over-customized for my taste, but undoing some of the stuff is way less effort than setting everything up would be).
It just does the things I want, you know? Everything works, I already have less weird compatibility issues than SUSE, and anything that doesn't work there's tons of resources to fix it. I think Tumbleweed is a really good option for someone who wants a really solid lightly technical system, but I guess Arch was my inevitable fate after all.
unless i get into void linux one day