Then don't maintain a customized distro? I use Manjaro at home and Mac at work, and the user experience is far better on Manjaro without any tweaking. Also it's easier to install the developer tools I need, but that depends on your use-case of course.
Just need to find the right distro. I can't stand Ubuntu because it has too many commercial interests attached and its bloated but it's the safest choice because its the most battle tested. The first thing I notice about Manjaro is that their website layout doesn't work on mobile, call me superficial but it makes me question their attention to detail.
Yeah, it's got less cruft than Ubuntu. Apple doesn't need to put adware into their OS because they make enough money from selling hardware and appstore commissions.
Try Manjaro. I've switched from Ubuntu to Manjaro a few months ago and I don't think I'll ever look back. Latest kernel and Gnome version make a huge difference in performance and stability (that was the main reason I switched, Ubuntu desktop kept breaking for some reason) and Pacman is a dream. I used to just apt update everything, which was nice, but now with snaps you don't know what you get and you sometimes need to download some deb or add a repo. Pacman has everything (when enabling AUT) and I haven't even touched the terminal for it, because the UI is so good.
