I've been using it daily for about a year and I have no complaints.

I use it on my gaming laptop. I've been using Linux in various ways since the nineties and just wanted to install Arch easily while I was brewing coffee, I had it ready to play games from my old Steam SSD within 20min. It installed proprietary NV drivers and keeps them up to date with new versions and kernels without me having to bother with that silliness, likewise for certain multimedia codecs that you have to go look for with other distributions, which is a bother.

However, I had to setup btrfs-assistant+grub-btrfs+btrfsmaintenance scripts myself, I wish it had an install option for that and I'm thinking Garuda might be a better option for this reason as that's configured by default for new users.

It also lacks a GUI app installer, it can be bewildering for newcomers to search for packages with yay and understand pacman/yay stuff. There are ways, like octopi to remedy that but it's not there by default.

TLDR: As an experienced user I enjoy it, I didn't have to waste a lot of time and attn to install and it works well.

It's a great distro but if you want to have more solid experience you could consider do these things

1- install LTS kernel alongside the normal one (especially if you use nvidia) because who knows what would happen in newer bleeding edge kernels .

2- some people like to use timeshift (I don't use it personally but it's recommended) and it's better to make btrfs disk .

3- don't use aur unless if there is a package that you can't get by official repos .

Other than that I feel like it's pretty stable distro and fast but please you have to consider doing these recommendations (from my personal experience)

I hope you enjoy your arch (endeavour os) experience .

Arch with a graphical installer. That's literally all there is to it. It's pretty decent imo

One thing I don't know about any Arch based distributions is how about configurations. On Arch, the default configurations for some packages, whether do not work out of the box, or are not the safest configs. Whether while installing new SW, or while updating, there's a good level of involvement particularly with configurations.

Apart from installation, which in rolling release distributions it might be about a one time thing per device, configuration might become a burden for new users.

I believe Manjaro (I've never used it) comes with some sort of sane configs that work out of the box for most users, unless when looking for particular tweaks, or so I read in the past. But Manjaro has fallen really down on people's preferences. If EndeavourOS uses Arch repos, I'm wondering if there's any difference, once installed, between maintaining Arch and maintaining EndeavourOS. Just by how it sounds, it's the same thing, a lot of wikies readings (particularly when not familiar with the SW and how to make it work, there's SW that works without particular configs, but there are some that don't really work nicely out of the box on Arch), having to config lots of things to install stuff and make it work, and then be careful on upgrades about configs changes. It doesn't look like EndeavourOS makes this any simpler, and just having some extra stuff, but not having their own repos, where they package SW with curated configs, then I see no purpose other than to make the Arch install easier, which now a days have alternative ways to do so.

Can some one please clarify on configs, and maintenance in general, for EndeavourOS? Is there an Arch based distribution really making this easier on new gnu+linux users, who are are really not used to deal with any of that? TBH, depending on Arch packages repositories sounds hard to achieve any of that...

Your issue seems to be outdated packages, so I wouldn't recommend distro hopping(especially to something arch based) for just that reason. Look into workarounds for those packages in mint itself. In the worst case scenario there's also the option of compiling from source.

I wouldn't recommend distro hopping to arch without some high level understanding of the different moving parts of the OS. EndeavourOS has given me almost no issues but when things break(like grub a while back) you have to be OK with touching parts of the system that just work and are taken for granted on distros like mint. It's why I don't consider anything arch based friendly to a "noob user".

If you're a "noob user" who wants to learn more you can try endeavourOS, that's kind of the spirit of it.

I have Arch on my notebook Sway and on my PC Endeavour OS first SSD Gnome, second KDE. Instalations was without any problems, minimal apps, no any problem. Recommend!!! (Best os, simple to install, very good community, maintenance and always up to date.

Endeavour is great, but not always smooth sailing.

However, I also don’t have the time to be always configuring my OS and just want something that works well out of the box.

You might have some of that ahead. I had to dive into configs to get things like trackpad scrolling and gestures work on my laptop. I eventually switched to Fedora on that machine when an update broke the bootloader and I couldn't be arsed to fix it.

You should prepare yourself to be the car enthusiast of computer users when thinking of using Linux at all, especially for gaming. You are the car but of computing when you dip into Arch based or other similar distributions. You will spend time looking at parts of the OS most people take for granted and can spend as much time as you want fiddling with tiny bits of the OS to tube it to whatever you want. So really it depends on what experience you want.

I went to EndeavourOS with i3WM (from dual boot Windows/ Ubuntu) and have been loving the experience. It's really helped push my boundaries with learning Linux.

Been using it the last 2 years and I find it great. Before that it was Mint about 5 years and PopOS about 2. Don't think I will ever go back to a Debian based distro

That was the first distro switching from Mac. Obviously. Used for 5 days only. Everything is too simple to make it convinient and easy to use. Top taskbar is absolutly useless, yet takes some vert space. Replacing most default apps or try Mint? Mint was ok (BTW).

I don't really understand the need for it. I'd rather just use Arch.