I recently switched to nixos which makes dependency management and configuration itself much easier. Probably the best option to run things on bare metal IMO.
Currently trying out NixOS, just switched from Gentoo. Interesting experience so far, will see if the switch will be permanent.
Immutable system, completely separated and well-defined development environments per project, and overall nix is pretty nice.
Ubuntu -> Manjaro -> Arch -> Gentoo -> NixOS