After hours and many tries, I finally got Arch Linux XFCE working. This time instead of wiping my main drive I used an SSD drive with a SATA USB adapter to my laptop and went to town. The fixes I had to do were so many I can't remember many of them, like getting the Network Notification in my panel, getting Pulse Audio to work, fixing Locales, adding directories and many more. This was definitely over my head but in the end, I learned a lot.
My biggest problem was that when I would search the Arch wiki I would have to search more for a dumbed down explanation. I finally got to where I could use the Arch wiki. Another problem was that Pacem and AUR were slow, compared to using Pacman, so I went to the trusty terminal and used Pacman.
I still don't have it the way I would like it, but the font rendering is something that looks like it will take me a few hours to mess with and I just don't want to do that. If you know what you want, you can probably ease through it with minimal problems, fixing and manipulating it with just your own knowledge and not relying on the community.
The community is great. In what I read, you really had to research your problem and let them know what you have done. If you don't check the wiki, then you are wasting their time. This is not a complaint from me. If you don't check the wiki and ask a question it's like inventing the wheel again and you're just wasting their time. Knowledgeable questions are treated business-like with just straight answers. Sometimes it will work and sometimes it doesn't. Just post your backup proof of your problem and then they'll get back to it. I thought Ubuntu had good web support but Ubuntu does not hold a candle to the Arch wiki. Then you also have the Stack Exchange and Linux Questions, both good sources for post-install questions. Then there is GIYF. Always Google, but never use any of these until you check the Arch wiki.
For years I've always wanted to see if I could install Arch Linux and I did, with the XFCE desktop. I think the only issue now I don't like the fonts, and like I said earlier I don't want to spend the time researching that. Plus I do enjoy distro-hopping, which some people don't like to hear and others live to do it in their virtual box. Just look at YouTube for all the tutorials in all 300 plus distros available.
I like Linus because of the community. There are a few backed by companies, like Solaris, Red Hat, Canonical, and others including Intel starting to jump in with their cloud system. The majority of the other 300 are mostly derived from these major players and that means a lot of unpaid volunteer work. Imagine putting in your 8 hours just to go home and working another few hours so people like me can have a decent computer system. Now distros like Antergos have quit with rumors of Linux Mint going under. Both of these were/are volunteer-based distros with a handful of main players behind the scenes and it's hard and sometimes unrewarding work with people not respecting the free hours put into these distros just for our convenience.
So if anybody that is behind the scenes on any distro, thank you for your time! For me, I'll stick with Manjaro XFCE and maybe do a Manjaro KDE test.
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