[viraptor]

It does need some more time to setup, that's true - things like custom drivers, power management, etc. require some config changes. But once it's working, I don't see it as a maintenance nightmare.

The only two points I could complain about is that:

1. There should be a better guide/support for dkms, or you have to recompile your driver by hand every kernel upgrade

2. You must look at the `pacman` output while upgrading the system, because sometimes (rarely) the migration step is printed out for manual application (for example "mkinitcpio hooks changed, replace all of pata, scsi, sata, usb with a single hook block").

I'd never recommend Arch to a beginner, but it's far from maintenance nightmare.

[atondwal]

Alternately all the important bits of pacman output are in /var/log/pacman.log and everything that _requires_ manual intervention is posted on the archlinux.org site. You should not update before checking the arch news.