My two cents: this is all nice and fun if your purpose when using a computer is learning about computers, but you don't do any actual work.
When you stop "messing" and need to do actual work, you are going to really appreciate a system with sane defaults (graphic environment working out of the box, drivers pre-installed, plug&play and audio stuff that just work) that can work predictably.
Of course, no system is immune to stupidity: yes, even on Ubuntu you must be aware of what are you doing and what consequences it will have.
For me, avoiding third-parties repository and going from LTS to LTS solves 95% of the problems, and in exchange I have a stable desktop machine that works all the day, everyday.
I have been messing around with Slackware, FreeBSD, Gentoo and NetBSD in the past and I am now a happy Xubuntu (and ubuntu-server) user.
When you stop "messing" and need to do actual work, you are going to really appreciate a system with sane defaults (graphic environment working out of the box, drivers pre-installed, plug&play and audio stuff that just work) that can work predictably.
Of course, no system is immune to stupidity: yes, even on Ubuntu you must be aware of what are you doing and what consequences it will have.
For me, avoiding third-parties repository and going from LTS to LTS solves 95% of the problems, and in exchange I have a stable desktop machine that works all the day, everyday.
I have been messing around with Slackware, FreeBSD, Gentoo and NetBSD in the past and I am now a happy Xubuntu (and ubuntu-server) user.