You are not alone. Many love its ‘restrained’ workflow, and DEs are subjective. It sounds like you are ready to move to KDE. KDE has a ‘Overview’ that mimics Gnome’s, so best of both worlds and the taskbar in KDE is actually functional. Don’t waste anymore time, make the switch to day. Operators are standing by. 🤣

KDE user so for my personal files I backup with both Kups and Bups (install both) and you get the choice of cloning type or only changed files with going back in time choices. Integrates into KDE taskbar/system settings.

For redundancy, I back up my main sync folder on the desktop to my laptop using Syncthing over my WiFi/network.

Yes, stick with Arch. Arch is not the issue if installed without the holding chambers Manjaro puts in place. Arch has a good installer on its own, but if you need a bit more, distros like EndeavourOS, Calam-Arch-Installer, ALCI (Arch Linux Calamares Installer,) and even Garuda are all fine options.

‘Classic canonical corporate move’…there I fixed it for you.

Red Hat is a corporation, putting dollars first. Not to mention Fedora is now starting to 'trample on user’s privacy with telemetry integration.’

Some are making the case that Fedora’s new telemetry integration isn’t like the bad telemetry like Google and others, it is ‘anonymised.’ Every corporation says this before they remove the username from the data collected and keep the unique user id. I don’t trust Red Hat…and now with this latest reveal, Fedora either. And privacy is all about trust.

This…all of it. I started with Arch using Manjaro, like so many do. There was a mass exodus that exploded, and the worst lot remained on the dev team. Beyond that, as you stated, they convice their users that holding back packages is for their benefit, when in reality, your system becomes unstable at times as a result, especially becoming out of sync with AUR. It is still one of the most popular Arch distros, and …well…I feel sorry for their uninformed users who believe it is a stable choice.

For information sake; Reasons Against Using Manjaro

No what you want is unstable Arch which you can freely do by changing the repos, but your user experience will be fraught with pain and issues. You can move to Debian and do the same by running their unstable branches, same results though, most likely a broken system.

Both will get you the newest releases.

Yes, they are Android derivities, but Android is basically Linux…runs off a linux kernel. If you want a pure linux system, I think there is a KDE platform for phones and Ubuntu (I think) but you can’t run regular Android Apps, do banking, etc. You are more open source, but limited in certain areas.

You have to find a phone that is compatible with open source Linux Phone OS. Most of the OS websites give a listing of what phone make/model works. FYI, almost all the Google Pixel phones work.

Here are a few I am keeping an eye on when my Pixel 4a/5G stops getting updates from Google…this year. /

LineageOS/ GrapheneOS/ CalyxOS/ e.foundation/

Youtube videos and other websites are good sources on how to install, etc.