For me, AURs main advantage is the huge library of software available. No mess resolving dependencies like when manually building from source and no issues with 3rd party repos breaking each others dependencies like in PPA
I went from Windows XP -> FreeBSD -> Debian -> several Ubuntu flavors -> MacOS -> Manjaro on my desktop. I ended up switching to MacOs after countless upgrade and graphics card issues in the early 2010s but switched back to Linux again after getting tired of Apples more and more restrictive environment.
For servers I’ve switched around between FreeBSD, Debian and Ubuntu at home and various Redhat based distros at work.
Right now I use Ubuntu because it just works for my Kubernetes home cluster and Redhat at work because its well supported for commercial software.
In Manjaro you just run this command, there’s a GU package manager as well, but I’ve never used it. Pamac takes care of downloading / building any required dependencies and the AUR repo includes any required patches for the application run well on Arch / Manjaro.
pamac build
I haven’t used Arch in years, but I believe it was something similar.
The whole system is pretty similar to, (but more refined than) FreeBSDs Ports tree.
Former distrohoppers, where did you settle down?
Which one(s) and why?