I have a similar experience. My not-so-tech-savvy brother also has the same laptop setup I do (arch+XFCE). He knows to yay -Syyu and it's usually never a problem. The recent upgrade there was the vlc package split problem so I told him to hold on upgrading and that I'd come and do it. While I needed to sit and filter and install the optional dependencies myself for my upgrade, a week later it was already figured out (based on user feedback I assume) and the usual yay -Syyu installed just the right optional dependencies.
I don't consider myself particularly adept with linux. I've only been running it daily on the desktop for the last few years and, aside from mucking around with TWMs, I've not done much poking about with the internals.
Despite the reputations, I've had far fewer issues on Arch-based desktop distros than back when I was rolling Ubuntu and Debian.
Yeah same. I think the release cycle actually doesn't matter at all. The reason for it is that the majority of breakage are caused by components/extensions of gnome and kde and non-DE-yet-complex software in distros with a lot of those present out of the box, like manjaro, breaking backwards compatibility every other week.
When people switch to arch they typically set things up from scratch, end up choosing simple tools and avoid most of the unstable stuff distros push onto you.
