Wait ~6 months, and you will encounter a case where simple package update will cost you more than that 45 minutes ;)
Even applications you'd expect to be native (apt packages) like `gnome-system-monitor` are included as snaps by default in the desktop version of ubuntu 18.04. All it takes is a someone with sufficient authority to make disabling snaps very difficult.[1]
Unfortunately, there are plenty of lunatics on both sides of the fence who think they should have the final say in what you can do with your computer and when you can do it.
[1] E.g gnome developers decided to change the default behavior of the power button, then decided that users shouldn't be allowed to change this behavior: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=755953
This is what's nice with the distro ecosystem. Someone messes their thing up and gives you the middle finger? Say bye and switch to a saner thing. Your apps will work on almost all of the Linux distros (GNU/ or not) and *BSD w/o any effort, and getting them to work otherwise is not only possible, but usually easy.
"Automatic updates for everyone"
If you don't want your software to automatically update then don't use a distribution format where the software automatically updates.
Is systemd the best init system? No. But to some of us it was an improvement over what came before it and it really hasn't given us the trouble that others claim it has given them.
I remember a colleague who ran Linux From Scratch on his laptop who was abhorred by the changes. We spent an afternoon trying to remove the stuff from an Ubuntu VM image he didn't consider necessary and a lot of it was really alien to him. As an fvwm user he really couldn't understand why almost everything needed dbus and pulseaudio. I couldn't understand a lot of the strange packaging dependencies either. And yet these are things that to me have improved real pain-points in linux distros.
While package management is a solved problem (well, on all platforms outside of Windows that is), that doesn't mean that occasional issues will not arise. Though for what it's worth: I run Arch which is about as hands on as it gets without compiling your own packages and it's been 10 years since the last time a package update cost me 45 minutes or longer of my time.
For example, I sometimes play some games on my brother's Win 10 PC (I don't use Windows on my laptop, and don't want to bother with setting up Wine and the games on it). A couple days ago it wanted to update, and I told it to postpone. Then I left for 15 minutes and came back, there was an update going on. It blocked us out of the computer for the entire afternoon and most of the evening doing black magic behind a soft blue screen.
Arch seems to have the same problems, and in addition few days ago I discovered that my wifi stopped working (that laptop was docked and was using wired connection for last few weeks but had wifi working before).
The worst part is those are the machines I use for work ;(
> The worst part is those are the machines I use for work ;(
Why are you using experimental OSs on work machines? The LTS versions exist for a reason.
Did you disable Wayland? You can easily select X.org on the log in. Or just use 18.04 which went back to X by default.
Also, I think you are being unfair, upgrades on Windows are bad too. You are always recommended to a do a fresh install.
You need to work on describing your actual issues instead of being so vague if you actually want help with things. Like with this:
> Arch seems to have the same problems, and in addition few days ago I discovered that my wifi stopped working (that laptop was docked and was using wired connection for last few weeks but had wifi working before).
I do not know if your wifi gave out on 17.10 or Arch. Arch is it's own bag of worms-for all I know you are running a prerelease kernel on that new Intel NUC that runs poorly on Windows right now due to bad drivers.
Arch breaks a lot on it's own. You shouldn't be using it if you don't intend to fix it. If you want a more user friendly with Arch, try Manjaro.