Nothing beats the Arch wiki, to be honest. One of the best and broadest collections of useful information around the web. And since Arch is not-too-modified in relation to upstream, all of the information is usable for most a lot of other distributions, too.

And yes: I’m using Arch, btw.

To be more specific: I’m running Arch with Hyprland (a tiling compositor for Wayland) on my DELL XPS 13 without any issues, running Arch with Openbox (X11) on my main computer since over a decade without any major issues (device is used for gaming, multimedia, video and image editing and screen recording), and on all devices I serve something from.

Since I run Arch as a server (had it as communication server, as DHCP/DNS server, as VPN endpoint on a Raspberry Pi, and as a gaming server, currently on my main server it’s used as host for a Docker setup), I can tell you, you don’t need to worry about any real issues regarding stability and performance. Arch is way less bleeding edge as non-Arch users think. Just update regularly every 2-3 weeks at least, and check the news before doing so.

I’m curious to hear about your experiences and recommendations!

It boils down to what effort you want to put into it.

If university and work usage is mainly running productivity stuff like some type of text processing or using web-based applications you likely won’t ever have any issues. If you’re constantly switching environments, need to run specific apps (maybe even 32-bit software), constantly use different video outputs, tons of different BT devices, etc. … well … Arch is of course capable of everything the bigger distributions have to offer by default (all the nice “magic” stuff that happens automatically in the background), you just need to set everything up by yourself.

I might be biased towards Arch, but maybe just try if it fits your intended purpose and if you’re willing to set up everything at least once before using it.

My vote would be Fedora, too. I’ve been hopping between distros for 16 years now. Funnily enough, I switched from Arch to Fedora.
And it just works, no broken dependencies or breaking a sweat when you forgot to update for two weeks.

If you can get used to the concept of an immutable file system (as discussed by @Guenther_Amanita) + flatpaks, it is really a smooth system without hassle. You should upgrade to the next version every 6 months - worked flawlessly for me the last two times (you should do backups before obviously).

Lack of AUR could be a thing - how much do you use it? I would say, that is the only weak point for Fedora regarding your requirements.

For me, it’s the perfect balance between recent packages , stability, and user experience.

Please let us know what you decided and why - I am curious to hear about your reasons!

Arch and endeavor are the same aside from endeavors simplified installation and some apps. Both let you utilize AUR.

Fedora is good. I used it when I used to use gnome (I could use one more use of the word use). Switched to endeavor when I started using KDE.

I like having AUR. I haven’t had any update issues.

I’m sticking with endeavor for now. Fedora might be more ready out of the box though if you need regular use apps.

Use.

Just install one. Find out.

I recently distro-hoped to Fedora Silverblue and I am quite pleased with it. This version has in immutable filesystem, thus you might want to look for another version of Fedora.

NixOS is big no go for me too, especially given that you can install the Nix package manager on any distro easily.

Arch Wiki is great and I often use it for non Arch distros well.

Use openSUSE Tumbleweed. It’s a rolling release distribution with the best a great KDE Plasma implementation.

Now, your specific question boils down to choosing between Arch and Fedora, since, arguably, Endeavour OS is actually Arch Linux. Now, as you’re willing to use a Qt-based DE, specifically Plasma, I’d say none of your options are ideal. That’s why I mentioned openSUSE Tumbleweed, but, for you, I’d say Arch Linux, however, you currently use Arch Linux, hence, you should just switch to the Plasma DE.

I just switched from Arch to Endeavour to Fedora! My 2 cents:

• Arch is like a barebones Lego box without instructions, only a set of pictures. Sure, you get a paper telling you how to ensamble a basic OS, but what to do of it is up to you. For example, you might want a firewall there, right? or maybe a systemd timer to trim your ssd? IDK, you can guess it on your own. The pieces are there, it’s up to you to decide what to use.
• Endeavour is like that same Lego box where someone handled you the manual from another themed box. If you installed Arch on your own, and felt like you might’ve missed something, or something feels off, EndeavourOS just gives you the ensambled set for you to play with. The problem? No problem, really. It feels like a greatly configured Arch installation.
• Fedora feels like a themed box. You don’t have whole lot of bricks like that other unthemed box (AUR), but damn, everything just works and it works great. Only caveat is that non free stuff (drivers, codecs, etc) require that you input some commands (but really, every linux distro requires this still). So far, my experience is between “wow, I didn’t know you could do/have this! Must’ve missed it in the arch wiki” and “damn, there’s no easy way to install X in Fedora? I miss the AUR :(”

PopOS beats all if its an Nvidia laptop. I’d use arch for anything else.

Fedora has been what I’ve been using for years. I used arch before for about a year and I still love it but I’ve just been fuckin with fedora

If you want to use the device for school and work I highly recommend a stable distro over rolling release. When it comes to stability nothing beats Debian and Debian 12 recently released so now is a good time to install it.

I’m really enjoying Fedora (just switched from Ubuntu and previously Debian). More current than Debian, doesn’t have Ubuntu’s canonical baggage, and more stable than Arch (nothing wrong with Arch, it’s just more bleeding edge than I want for anything other than experimenting. YMMV. And Arch documentation is fantastic - I use it to help unravel issues/find solutions on other distros after a bit of translation and sanity checks).

Fedora is well inside the Gnome camp but it’s basically unaltered so you feel freer to tweak and make it your own. (you can obviously run any environment you want).

Not sure if Red Hat’s nonsense will infect Fedora down the road but I can switch it up if I feel like it later. (for a server, I’d just do Debian or possibly Ubuntu.)

Unfortunately, my main machine remains Windows with WSL. Too many things (of what I need) just won’t run on Linux…

I think you want something boring. Boring, in terms of “it just works”, which is essential for school. You want to focus on learning, not troubleshooting.

I’ve been looking around a bit more, and now I’m kind of curious about Fedora, specifically the KDE spin (or i3, I haven’t quite decided).

Use Fedora Atomic (immutable versions of Workstation/ KDE spin, etc.). Especially uBlue. It’s a community edition on universal-blue.org, which features very vanilla images of Silverblue for example, but with some QoL-changes, many inofficial DEs/ TWMs, and much more.

The cool thing is, you can just rebase to whatever spin you like, e.g. KDE and i3 and don’t need to decide. It’s like a reinstall, without actually loosing data.

It’s also extremely robust (barely breakable) and in general doesn’t get in your way.

While it’s not rolling release, the stability improvements and user experience compared to something like Arch, or even a more comfortable fork like EndeavourOS, seem quite decent

It’s not only decent, it’s great! Everything “just werks™” and it’s very very reliable.
In terms of stability (update schedule) it’s a great mix between very well tested, but not stale.
I wouldn’t like to update daily like on Arch.

but in your experience, does that make up for the lack of the AUR?

The cool thing is, you don’t loose anything.
I, for example, have an Arch container in Distrobox, and I use it all the time. I even have access to the AUR and all Arch packages on my image based Fedora install.
This gives me bleeding edge software, especially for the terminal, without risking breaking my host OS. Arch seems to be too high maintenance for me, and I’m not willing to spend my time troubleshooting.

If you want close to the bare minimum of software needed to run a system, and setup everything exactly as you like it, use arch.

If you want a preconfigured system that is performant, stable, secure, but still able to be customized to your liking, use Fedora.

If your scared of using a comand line for installation, use EndeavorOS.

I have used all 3 of these, in some capacity. I run my servers on Fedora Workstation, because it just works and comes with properly configured sepolicies out of the box. Arch has been the daily driver on my desktop/laptops for almost a decade now, because I often like to experiment with new programs and replacements for commonly used software, and the arch wiki is a wonderful. I tried EndeavorOS on an old PC to play YouTube videos/stream on my TV and it worked fine. I had to uninstall a handful of apps it came preloaded with, but that’s easy enough with an arch base. But IMO, now that the archinstall tool exists and is officially supported, there is actually no reason to use EndeavorOS unless you really don’t want to type a couple commands into a command line.

1. Endeavour is just Arch with an installation wizard and a pretty theme.

2. Definitely don’t use nix or guix as an OS if you’re making posts like this. They’re great as a supplementary package manager, but extremely difficult and convoluted as an OS.

3. I’ve recently switched from Arch to Nobara after running it for a few years. It’s really nice being able to update without the fear of something breaking. I’m just using flatpak and guix for the few packages that are missing from the repos, no AUR needed.

4. Install i3 on top of whatever DE you want, don’t look for a specific spin. It’s really useful to have tools for stuff like power management. Also, when you break something, you’ve got a backup.

Once Arch is set up you have Endeavour

I really don’t see a reason to use Arch over it outside of the initial learning experience and bragging on the internet