I think the main issue with Arch comes if you try to use it like Debian Stable. Like, if you don't run pacman -Syu for a year, you probably won't have a bootable system the next time you try. How about six months? My guess is you'd still be stuck fixing shit. Where is the safe "X" in "as long as I update every X, I'll be fine?" Who knows. That's not a very well-defined problem.

I sort of understand the issue here. I use Arch because I'm picky about system things, and it seems to require going against the fewest strongly held platform opinions in order to get it the way I want it. In an ideal world, I'd get it set up that way and not need to touch it very much afterwards. Arch requires frequent touches. Fortunately, almost none of them require any real mental energy, and I'm willing to do the occasional bit of "real work" if needed to keep it going, but that's a trade-off that may be more painful for some than others.

I imagine it's a pacman keyring issue. I had it break on me on multiple occasions, on different machines, all after not having updated for a long-ish while.

I don't get this either. Before my current PC, my last install was 6 years old. I could count on one hand the number of times I broke that install and every single time was my own damn fault.

I had Manjaro on a laptop that didn't get updated for about a year. Broken on update because I didn't check Arch news first to see if manual intervention was needed. Was still faster to fix than a backup-reinstall.

Countless other installs of Arch or derivatives on various PCs and laptops without issue.

There can definitely be more of a learning curve but once you're set, I find it much easier to maintain than other distros. 🤷🏻‍♀️