For me, that is way more work than I want. I am old and grumpy and want an easy life and tools that work acceptably out of the box.
For playing around, that's different. Thus A2 and Haiku and things. But for work, if it needs that much work to adjust the shipped distro to me, then it is the wrong distro.
I'm 'old' too. Born summer 1969. What makes me grumpy is the OOTB experience of any distro I tried. And I (mostly) don't want to have to compile stuff anymore. So I settled for (mostly) binary distros, like Arch, which btw. I (mostly) had no troubles with whatsoever. It just lacked 'convenience' and some scientific/technical stuff in their repositories, which I'd then have to compile again, so no, Arch had to go. Settled for Debian then, because even though their ways of doing things can seem bizarre, old-fashioned and stale, it (mostly) just works, they have it all, and when you get around their 'bizarreness' shiny new, too.
Almost paradise, except for 'systemdness', which I can't stand. So there are countless derivatives with different goals and priorities, some of them for running live in RAM, some of them being especially 'free' from an ideological but impractical POV(which I also can't stand), and some of them eliminating 'systemdness'.
Then there are Antix/MX whose goal seems to be to get that stuff running any way they can on any somewhat reasonable system, more or less frugal in case of Antix, rather comfortably in case of MX. While giving a shit about ideology, prioritising availability of all sorts of drivers, connectivity, convenience in very pragmatical ways. While running in RAM for speed(optionally), but still enabling persistence in various ways.
This toolset of them enables me to get up and running on almost anything from very barebones images with the presses of a few function keys, some mouseclicks, some eliminating of unwanted stuff(by mouseclicks, no editing necessary, I checked), installing my stuff, choosing theme/widget/deco/whatever, and be done with it in maybe 30 minutes max initially(including that remaster thing).
From there on it is absolute BLISS for me, because that way I have fast systems, looking and feeling how I like it, without getting in my way, or missing anything. For MONTHS, while still being updated, without reboots. Exceptions are kernel or fundamental library updates. These are just a few clicks in Synaptic anyways, reload, mark, apply, YÄSS, YÄSS!, gieev, gieev meee new stuff! Maybe 3 to 5 minutes daily while I'm slurping my morning coffee or tea? Too much change? Switched some core components meanwhile? Remaster in not more than 10 minutes. Reboot. Done.
BLISS again.
For playing around I'm tempted to try https://github.com/rochus-keller/OberonSystem3 (since you mentioned A2 ;-)) but probably not, because I'd rather enjoy riding my new hyperbicycles more ;-)
I have about 2 years on you then... I just about _remember_ the Summer of '69, and I don't just mean the song.
I have found several distros over the years that had an out-of-the-box experience that made them usable for me. MX is close, openSUSE with Xfce is a very good distro, but at present, Ubuntu with Unity is the least work of all. Two of my machines are running an install that started out as 13.04 or so. Over a decade of longevity is excellent in my book.
Oberon is a hoot, if very weird indeed. I'd love to see a native Raspberry Pi version.
Sadly I came off my bicycle in April and smashed my right forearm to flinders. The surgeons save it, but it is held together with about 35 pieces of steel, and still very fragile and can't be used for much... except typing. I think this means I have to give up bicycles, and I bought my first car in August. :-/
Sorry to hear that mishap. Had many 'near misses' but never got hurt. Not even scratches. Still not wearing a helmet.
Had a very badly broken upper arm/shoulder though by industrial accident, while doing everything by the book, following any fucking rule, protective shoes, helmet, reflective clothing. But something weighing a few 100 tons tore free and gave me a fast kick. Shit happens. Had only 7 screws and a plate in, for about 10 years. Limited movement only, and pain. Now an endoprosthetic like an artificial hip joint, but for the shoulder. Full (and fast) movement and load-bearing again, no pain. Can do pushups and pullups.
I'm telling this because doctors initially said that I had to suck it up, that there wouldn't be a better outcome with endoprosthetics. Some decade later, somewhere else, they looked at and into it, asking me If I'd be crazy? 'That stuff has to go out!' Me: 'R u sure? I've been told...'
They: 'Forget that! That's all wrong!'
Now there may have been some progress in surgical procedures and endoprosthetics fur upper arm and shoulder joint in that decade, but not that much. I also opted out of robodoc, and had it done by an old and experienced surgeon by hand.
For me, that is way more work than I want. I am old and grumpy and want an easy life and tools that work acceptably out of the box.
For playing around, that's different. Thus A2 and Haiku and things. But for work, if it needs that much work to adjust the shipped distro to me, then it is the wrong distro.
There are good reasons I don't run Arch.