Even running Arch for the last decade or so, I largely don’t have issues that wind up being any more complicated than downgrading a package every so often. Most of my config editing occur in one of three situations. First and most common, initial setup of a program to telling it where to find any files it needs and change any default settings I have a different preference on. Second, it’s a program I use constantly and want to tweak it to work just so, adding to it as I discover new features that catch my interest, like tweaking my ncmpcpp and tmux setups. The last case is procrastination, where I get obsessively focused on something because, clearly, the reason I haven’t written my 5 page paper due tomorrow has nothing to do with the fact I’ve been screwing around and not keeping up with my coursework for the last week, and can instead be squarely attributed to the fact that I have discovered some aspect of my emacs setep that needs to be refined, like realizing I dislike how biber formats my references in Auctex and needing to spend hours finetuning my reference style to m’ exact preferences.
For most general use cases, like browsing the web, listening to music, watching movies and maybe firing up a word processor, this is entirely unnecessary. To give an example, I got tired of having to periodically spend a night purging my elderly mother’s laptop of myriad viruses and uninstalling the dozen or so IE toolbar she kept infecting her system with. Clearly not a techy person. I put Linux mint on it, changed the desktop shortcut for Firefox to the Internet Explorer icon, ditto for Open Office’s word processor with Ms Word, and she was happy as could be without really noticing a difference. I would just remote in and periodically update it. Worked fine for her until she got a new new computer, by which point she’d realized she could, in fact, live without all that malware taking up half her screen in IE.
In the Northeast, it’s often cheaper, and pretty much always faster, to fly than to take Amtrak, unfortunately. My family tried to get me on a last minute family gathering over the holidays, for example, and Amtrak was going to be over $400 round trip, and a round trip flight was less than $200, and about 2h30 quicker each way. If I look up the same trip saying I want to go from NYC to Boston today and return Tuesday, taking Amtrak at crazy early or late hours would let me have an 8+ hour round-trip come out to $285. Round trip flights would run $427 pretty much any time of day and take 3 hours in total. For me, as a younger guy often travelling solo, it might make sense to just wake up stupid late and be on a 2am Amtrak train to save some money. For people with kids, elderly folks, or anyone who has time commitments that mean they can’t do that, the $427 flight at 10am sounds a lot more appealing.
It only gets worse as the distance goes up. NYC to Montreal is only a $153 round trip on Amtrak if you book in advance to snag one of the cheap seats, but it takes 11h41m each way. Round trip flights going direct run $242, but going and coming take only a quarter of the time for going one-way on Amtrak.
Oddly enough, going south, Amtrak actually makes sense. Booked far enough in advance, I can go from NYC to Philadelphia, Baltimore, or Washington, DC. for between $30-$50ish, last time I looked. Flights are more expensive and only save me about 90 minutes on the longer legs. I have heard that outside of the NE Corridor, Amtrak is much more affordable, but I don’t know how true that is.