I have switched from OS X, to Arch (2 months now full time?), so I'm not exactly coming from your angles, but I will say that every single piece of software I'v

I have switched from OS X, to Arch (2 months now full time?), so I'm not exactly coming from your angles, but I will say that every single piece of software I've ever needed has been in the main repos, and if it wasn't there, it was in the AUR. What's fascinating is that AUR packages get voted up. Packages past a certain threshold get the choice to become a main repository package. Creating and maintaining community packages is a snap with their build system (though I've never done it personally, but understand the mechanism). On top of that, re-building your kernel, should you ever need to (I did), is dead simple. So to your main argument of more compromise, I believe it to be false. It's less compromise to me. I feel I have to compromise with an Ubuntu distro that has made all the choices for me (and for a client-services company at least, you'll come to the day where you need to know what those choices were). Now I have the power and ability to make the decisions I want to make, especially following the extensive wiki and super helpful forums (I feel like you could compare the helpful responses there with the type of intelligence that this community possesses). To your final point, of the "just because I value things that help me learn Linux", this will absolutely help you learn Linux. And once you know it the Arch way, most of the other ways seem completely opaque. The standards of packages in Arch allow you to find all the important bits of all the software you installed. My company uses Arch for our servers as well because we know we can count on the standards and have up to date software that, for us, "just works".