Not original poster, but similar position. I've used Debian privately and professionally on servers and desktop since the 90's, altogether several hundred syst

Not original poster, but similar position. I've used Debian privately and professionally on servers and desktop since the 90's, altogether several hundred systems. I've also used Slackware and LFS years ago. My personal laptop runs Arch the last few years (with Debian stable as backup partition); my work computer runs Debian unstable or testing (depending on release cycle). The reason I like Arch is that it's close to the source. Debian often adds more patches and layers, policies and complexity to the building process. In Arch I can get an updated package in hours straight from the source origin, either built by the maintainer or built and packaged myself. It's very helpful if you are tracking, fixing or reporting bugs to upstream developers. True rolling release model is handy if you'd like to be part of open-source development or need to get something working at the bleeding edge. Note that Debian's added complexity and stability is much appreciated for all other systems, it's just a bit more difficult to pull straight from the source for many packages. I do not need and would not want to run bleeding edge on most systems. Edit: and thanks!