It certainly can be a hobby, but so can any other Linux distribution. I've been using Arch for years, and the amount of tinkering I do is pretty close to none.

It certainly can be a hobby, but so can any other Linux distribution. I've been using Arch for years, and the amount of tinkering I do is pretty close to none. The most difficult part is the install, which really isn't that bad if you read the installation guide. My first install took about 2 hours, and now it takes ~20 minutes. When you install, you basically do the following: 1. Configure internet access (netctl is pretty simple) 2. Set up mirrors (if you're lazy, just enable the kernel.org ones, they're the most consistent) 3. Mount partition(s) - need to create them manually too; cfdisk is great 4. Install base packages 5. chroot - basic configuration (hostname, locale, etc) 6. Install/configure grub 7. Reboot 8. Install everything else, may take a few reboots to make sure everything comes up as expected In my recent installs, I install the desktop environment (and drivers) and enable it before rebooting, so when it comes up, it's ready to go. The important thing to remember when coming from something like Ubuntu is that you need to enable services through systemd manually. What I really appreciate about Arch is that I really haven't had to touch it since I got it configured. I run updates every week or so and check archlinux.org first to make sure there are no weird steps required to do an update (usually deleting a file on the filesystem or upgrading a dependency first or something due to a package change). I haven't had any significant breakage, though I have had to roll back the kernel once or twice in the last couple years (Arch keeps one backup kernel by default). Make sure to always reboot when the kernel gets upgraded and you'll be fine. Also, the issues I've had are because the nvidia driver didn't get updated with the kernel, so if you have AMD or Intel graphics, this likely won't happen to you. I've tried a few different distributions (Ubuntu, Fedora, openSUSE), and honestly Arch has been the least finicky once installed. I hate release-based distributions since doing a release upgrade tends to break things.