Yeah, I assumed something similar. Arch (may be endeavor also) is very much a la carte build your own system, so coyld be some tweaks needed. I found Leap and Tumbleweed have no issues with btrfs because its integral to the whole distro. My NVME use on desktop and laptop have been going steady for 7 years.

If you don't think you want snapshotting then dont worry too much about it and use whatever fs you like. if you want a nice btrfs experience try tumbleweed or leap, it is already fully integrated with system and grub , and maintenance with cleanup etc. cobbling together btrfs on your own is fine too but if you miss sometging and mess things up it is usually user error not btrfs error. .

Is this arch?

It means lower quality of living, because most cash goes to rent, and gas is higher in Vancouver too, so road trips are not on the agenda to escape the monotony.

Hopefully I didn't come across as too negative, I enjoyed the trip, beautiful scenery in Thunderbay, Alberta and BC. Hwy 3 through BC is gorgeous, but slower than Highway 1. Fernie, a small town between BC and Alberta was super friendly people.

Since you want GUI config go with OpenSUSE. it has Yast2-gtk GUI for all admin config, server config, software install, etc. And if you mess anything up you do a boot from previous snapshot to get back to normal operation, if all is good issue snapper rollback command, and that snapshot is now your default boot. (No need to diagnose what is wrong, more time being productive) if you can't find a package in the GUI search (of default repos) then software.opensuse.org has OBS community and experimental packages (like arch AUR). During the install summary you can go into software details and remove all, or any packages you want, or add...so you don't have to do the full install of everything if you like more minimal system.

Yep, hardware can make a difference, so I recognize that (I have one machine that will not install any deb based distro, some notify of the bug. some ignore it and do an install but cannot boot due to hardware bug. RPM based distros acknowledge the issue amd work around it) But permission issues and missing files from default install are just not something I have time to deal with.

I did the same distance, your time line is really tight, if you can extemd it I would. It took me 6 days travelling just at or below speed limit due to a trailer. First night i did campsite but I found setup and take down took so long that the rest of the stops I just slept in the van when tired rather than doing specific night stops. it will be lots of stops with a child. Some highway areas have nothing to stop at and so you will need to plan for these zones. Saskatchewan is boring as hell so hopefully you have car games etc for entertainment. Thunderbay has a Terry Fox historic site, which was a nice rest.

EndeaverOS. On two systems it installed but lots of error popup windows right from desktop launch. just seemed Janky compared to plain Arch or any other popular distro.

Ask Osoyoos about their high cancer rate from pestices being used on all the fruit and berry farms there.

This is the memeiest meme. No words at all.