The initial install is certainly that way -- the install media drops you to a command line and you get to partition/format disks, write network config files, et

The initial install is certainly that way -- the install media drops you to a command line and you get to partition/format disks, write network config files, etc., yourself -- but once it's running, things are very smooth. Everything is close to upstream so you don't have distro-specific crud that breaks randomly. It's a rolling release model so you just update daily or weekly and don't worry about big (12.04 -> 14.04) jumps. And as GP mentioned, the package repository is pretty comprehensive, and the community-contributed packages (AURs) exist for every obscure thing you could imagine -- Skype, Steam, etc. Definitely worth a try IMHO.