As someone that was on a straight Arch install for years I’ve come to appreciate Manjaro + their holding back of non-critical updates for a couple weeks for additional testing. Between that and sticking to LTS kernel versions I’ve run into way fewer issues (not that being on the bleeding edge for updates was that bad, but problems certainly came up occasionally).

Agreed, Proton and other alternatives work great!

That’s a little harsh but I definitely agree it doesn’t tend to offer a better or equal alternative to any free options available. You’re giving up a certain level of ease of use.