Great points about learning, but I’m just explaining what my original comment was about: daily experience of using a distro and reliability.
For me arch installation was the most educational Linux experience since after 10+ years of using Linux, that was the first time I clearly understood each part of the system. But tbh that knowledge has so far been mostly academic - knowledge for the sake of knowledge.
All this comparing and inter-distro warring seems pointless.
It’s got a point when every thread has people recommending arch, even when it’s not relevant in any way. We’re talking about arch in a thread about a nixos guide after all.
My NixOS config works this way
nixos-rebuild switch --upgrade
for system package upgrades and config changeshome-manager switch
for user package updates and config changes