The last point is new to me, will check it out, thank you!

use ssds?

But I have four personal computers and multiple devices from the family to maintain and system administration is no longer my hobby …

but you are writing documentation for scripts?

With each new version of an application there’s the change that configuration files or functionality changes. Packages might even get replaced with others.

Even if this would be true, how would that impact your configuration? It doesn't full-stop. If you want to access those new features you simply need to check how to activate them in your config file. Or are you making config edits in /etc/ ?!

Your next paragraph I don't understand, it seems specifically aimed at some kind of self "maintained" script, which as nothing to do with rolling release or distributions.

Uhm you never actually used a rolling release distro obviously. Why would you have to read change logs? Also what are you referring to with "test my documentation (shell scripts)"? Why would those not work if package xyz is updated? You are not making much sense, but maybe I am lacking the experience in UNIX to understand your point of view.

Your package manager should tell you about conflicts and even if it doesn't and something is not working like it did before, you do a simple snapshot rollback and wait another week to update or actually read what might cause the issue. And those incidents are like super rare, at least on Opensuse Tumbleweed (e.g. 2-3 times in a year).

nu is probably the best shell for ad-hoc data processing, handling all my daily needs in one expression.

I am really struggling with this, I heard about nu shell some time ago, but the fact that you had to learn some form of new language made me reluctant to actually try it. As a fisher user I want to have sane usable defaults, without having to learn just another programming language for a "tool".

What am I missing?

The thing is, helix has useable defaults, you dont need plugins, thats the whole point for me. Keeping plugins up to date across machines and making sure they work is just tiresome. In terms of tmux/zellij can't say much, but I never got used to tmux because the controls seem unintuitive. Tested zellji just briefly and it seems it tries to show you the controls instead of hiding them, which is helpful if you are trying to get used to something.

While it’s not a replacement for an existing tool and isn’t in your list, nnn is very helpful in many cases, especially bulk renames and reorganizations.

Can you give an example on the reorganization benefits with nnn? I am using it myself but I still feel like a noob with it.

Are you still using bash?

Yea Gentoo is the go-to for new users. Are you from the last millenium?

Arch is for those who like to tinker, edit lots of config text files and read man pages and wiki entries.

Basically how every linux user should be.

Alacritty is written in rust. 😎