alt Hacker NewsI have a similar experience. My not-so-tech-savvy brother also has the same laptop setup I do (arch+XFCE). He knows to yay -Syyu and it's usually never a problem. The recent upgrade there was the vlc package split problem so I told him to hold on upgrading and that I'd come and do it. While I needed to sit and filter and install the optional dependencies myself for my upgrade, a week later it was already figured out (based on user feedback I assume) and the usual yay -Syyu installed just the right optional dependencies.
I don't consider myself particularly adept with linux. I've only been running it daily on the desktop for the last few years and, aside from mucking around with TWMs, I've not done much poking about with the internals.
Despite the reputations, I've had far fewer issues on Arch-based desktop distros than back when I was rolling Ubuntu and Debian.
That said, Debian on a server every time.