Arch Linux 32x64 bits, Developers and Window Managers Support

Question

Greetings!
After having some time issues due to college that prevented me from this, I wish to have again a rolling-release distro in my computer.
I was in the past a big fan of Gentoo, but now it seems too much work to compile everything from scratch. Also they seemed to have some issues with the developers - the original developer if I understood correctly has quit the project, others were forced to quit due to misbehavior, etc. - and maybe due to some other facts their popularity on distrowatch dropped drastically.
Then this year I've tried Debian Testing... My goodness, that was messy. Tons and tons of bugs on XFCE, like thunar hanging on load and displaying error messages, gedit not removing the ~lock files properly on close, so I had the myfile and ~myfile, and many others. Really, I gave up.
I wish to give Arch Linux I try then. Of course that would be quite stupid to ask if arch linux is the best choice in an arch linux forum, but there are some key points that if you could answer would help me a lot to give it a try:
1. 32x64
"Should I use 32-bit or 64-bit?" is NOT the intended question. Many still prefer 32-bit-pae on a 64-bit capable machine, others prefer 64-bit. I wish to use 64-bit. Made my mind. But I would like to know if the support of 64-bit on Arch Linux is as good as 32-bit and if it comes by default with cross-libs which makes me able to run 32-bit applications natively right out of the box,
2. Developers
About how many and what's their relation with the users? When I've googled for Arch Linux, I've had found a review video on youtube where some guy said in the comments that developer's mind changed a lot in the past 2 years and they introduced many buggy packages that required manual workaround. At the end of his comments, he said "Sympathy? Apologies for the ****? Nope. blame the user for trusting 'pacman -Syu'" Surely I don't know which are these options because I haven't read about pacman yet (just know it's the default package manager) but you get the idea.
Another key question: Is Arch Linux hiring new developers over the time? Replacing the ones that leaves for the many reasons?
3. Window Managers Support
With Gnome3's overall rejection (including mine), we have only two options: Switch to KDE or try other Window Managers. I still wish to have faith on gtk, so the first option is still not considered by me. I don't wish to know "which one is the best", because that's another large discussion just as the 32-bit x 64-bit. Just how good is Arch's support (updated constantly? bug-fixes?) on:
- XFCE
- MATE
- Cinnamon
(Of course there are others like LXDE, Enlightenment, etc. but I've decided to narrow down to XFCE even having quite bad experiences on Debian Testing.)
4. Package Manager
Last, being a rolling-release dist, can I add an option for a specific package to install a specific older version and/or not upgrade when you tell the dist. to upgrade everything? I remember that back on Gentoo I could edit a text file and just type the version of the package I wished to keep and the "update everything" option wouldn't touch the package (worked also to try new versions that were still not stable enough).
Any replies will be very appreciated. Sorry for the long post.
Best regards.

Answer 1

I'll start at the end with #4.  Of course on the arch forums you will get people who are biased towards liking arch - but I think if you ask in other communities you will regularly hear that arch's package management system is its greatest strength.  Pacman is the primary tool for this, but we also have makepkg for things in the Arch User Repository (AUR), and the Arch Build System (ABS) to recompile anything from the main repos with additional/alternate compilation options.
But for your direct question, there is an option to only upgrade to a particular version of a given package.  There is an option in pacman's configuration file for just this purpose.  However depending on what the package is, this could lead to problems.  Users are discouraged from updating most of their system while keeping some older packages - This can lead to issues with shared dependencies.  Of course if you build the package from source (AUR or ABS) yourself, such issues would be easy to resolve.  Is there a certain package you know you'd want to keep at an older version?  If you tell us what it is, we can give more specific information on how easy/hard it would be to accomplish.
#3: Arch is a DIY distro.  You choose whatever window manager / DE you want.  I can vouche for XFCE working wonderfully in arch.  There are also numerous archers who use mate and cinnamon.  I have heard of some problems, but (AFAIK) these have nothing to do with compatibility with arch, rather these are due to upstream issues.  In other words, cinnamon, mate, xfce, or any other WM should work just as well on arch as on any other distro.  I'd bet our wiki for installing and configuring those WMs are better than those of the distros that bundle the WM with the core install.  (In addition to package management, you will find the arch wiki is second to none).
#2: I can't answer with any specifics - other than to say they continue to do an excellent job.  I am not surprised by the youtube video - not because I'd agree with it, quite the opposite.  But as arch is a DIY distro it puts some responsibility on the user to maintain their own system.  If one is not prepared for nor willing to do this, they often become frustrated and end up blaming someone else.  Often this is the developers, sometimes it is the forum moderators, other times it is the whole arch community.  In every case these accusations are absurd.  Your questions on replacement of developers is a good question though - there is a history page on the wiki which might give some insight on this, but I suspect others will have better input on this.
#1: I use i686 (32bit) on two of my computers and it works perfectly.  It sounds, however, that a majority of the community uses 64bit (which I just updated to on one of my computers).  My 64bit system works perfectly as well, but I don't have any 32bit-only apps.  Occasionally there are forum threads about some issue or another with "multilib" applications which are 32bit programs run in a 64bit system.  Generally these threads seem to be resolved without much hassle.  You can search for some of them yourself: Skype seems to be a common topic of such issues.
All in all, I'd reiterate arch's strengths in it's package management and wiki/documentation.  Potential weaknesses could be found by users who are unwilling or unable to take responsibility for their own system.  I word this is a bit biased manner - there are many people who have no interest in being responsible for maintaining their own system, a majority of all computer users would fall into this category; most of them would be quite unhappy with arch linux.  If you were happy with gentoo in the past and only want to avoid constant recompiling then you probably would be one who could be very happy with arch.
Or an even shorter summary: try it out.  If you don't like it, switch.