Or just plain arch. Installing it with archinstall isn't that hard

Manjaro manages to do just about everything wrong for one reason or another. They're trying to be the Canonical of the Arch ecosystem and they're not even close to competent enough to pull it off.

I'm sure they'll find some way to DDOS something with their own telemetry sooner or later.

For gaming rigs, check out Garuda, imo a pretty nice Arch distro without telemetry and easy installation.

I had a forum account from long ago that I barely use and even I was able to vote ... so if you had an account there, give it a try and vote!

The only thing archinstall script misses for me is option for flatpak setup from the get go

the archinstall script is officially supported and very straightforward. like, almost Calamares-but-in-TUI straightforward.

Going to second other comments. Even without archinstall. It feels like it will be harder than it is. Umm, just save yourself a bit of time and configure the network and install a console editor (nano/vim whatever) while in the chroot (if going full manual). It was a minor pain to work around that for me.

There are pages discussing how to do everything (helps to have a laptop with browser, or a phone to look them up). At the end, you generally know exactly what you installed (OK no-one watches all the dependencies), and I've found any borks that happen easy to fix because I know what I installed.

It's not that hard, just read the install guides and instructions. My first Arch install was like 8y ago and I expected it to be difficult - it wasn't.

After you figure out how to properly partition your disk, you learn how the entire setup is actually quite simple Basically, Mount partitions, pacstrap to install the base system, generate fstab, chroot in, create a unprivileged user and add it to sudo, setup grub, configure internet, exit chroot and unmount, reboot into the newly installed system, configure X11/Wayland to your liking

I highly recommend BTRFS as your root filesystem, and then configure snapshots. This way if an update goes sideways (pretty rare), you can roll back and wait for fixes.

I haven't used Arch for a few years, but my openSUSE Tumbleweed install came with it by default, and it has saved me a few times in the 7 or so years I've used it. Maybe the new instructions include that, idk, but you'll be glad you have it.

Consider Endeavour.

OpenSuse Tumbleweed. Reliable and up to date.

EndeavorOS is what you want, fits the same niche but without being fucking Manjaro. :-)

Could also check out openSUSE if you don't mind the lack of an AUR