wfh OP , 4 hours ago

FWIW I ran my gaming rig on Manjaro for a couple of years.

It doesn’t need constant maintenance, and it doesn’t break. The whole point of it is to be a stable variation of Arch.

It does need regular maintenance, as highlighted in every single stable update announcement. It doesn’t break if you follow these maintenance steps when relevant to your install. It is absolutely not stable (as in Debian Stable or RHEL or SLES stable) as things are moving quickly. It might be “stable” as in “crash-free”, but it is not “stable” stable. And as I said, after running it for 2 years, I’m not convinced it’s that crash-free either. I remember an era (I think 5.9-ish kernel series) that crashed all the time.

It doesn’t have a highly irregular update schedule, it’s quite regular — every two weeks

Okay, almost-semi-regular then.

AUR doesn’t “expect” anything, it’s a dumping ground where anybody can put anything.

True, AUR is not sentient. AUR creators, on the other hand, are overwhelmingly Arch users who builds their scripts targeting an up-to-date Arch system.