As someone running Arch, I have no idea how devs can put up with OSX or Windows. Both are awful, both you cannot fix yourself, and both get in the way all the time of what you want to do.
For me, if I'm missing something, its a pacman or AUR search away. If I need development features of anything it exists as a -git repo as well, and I can super fast insert my patches and get what I need immediately. No updates or any of this insanity stand in my way, and my systems been stable for almost three years since I built it, I just subscribe to the Arch announcements mailing list for major updates that might cause problems. We just got Linux 4.4 yesterday, and I booted today and kept on rolling as per usual.
For me, if I'm missing something, its a pacman or AUR search away. If I need development features of anything it exists as a -git repo as well, and I can super fast insert my patches and get what I need immediately. No updates or any of this insanity stand in my way, and my systems been stable for almost three years since I built it, I just subscribe to the Arch announcements mailing list for major updates that might cause problems. We just got Linux 4.4 yesterday, and I booted today and kept on rolling as per usual.