I vote Arch. Yeah, yeah, but it taught me Linux better than any other distro. Yeah you can break it but that’s kinda the point because once you’ve figured out what went wrong you’re left knowing how to fix it again in the future.
The Arch Wiki is second to none, is kept updated promptly when things change with the relevant package to the page you’re reading and in many cases it’s literally referenced as a source for other Non-Arch distro’s documentation
Btw I use Arch.
Edit: I also, for no rational reason, would like to be able to use the default package manager exclusively. I mean sure, you can use makepkg manually with the AUR so Arch still applies but that’s pretty inconvenient. If you go with Arch and give up this part I recommend yay as my aur-helper of choice.
I still haven’t heard a convincing argument to not use .local and I see no reason to stop.