SOLUS_INVICTUS . Waiting impatiently for Solus to become active and stable again !
Ironic, isn't it. Once I got rid of Nautilus all my Solus troubles went away. I'm not doing the stuff you are doing but the hard freezes and hard reboots...have had periods of those....three periods....hardware twice (hdd, memory stick) and once when an app was bleeding memory out of control, regularly and an update fixed it. But none in a really long time.
Speaking of nautilus...DE's that are not shipping with KDE/Mate ootb (dolphin/caja) are using Nemo more and more. Most of the Fedora spins have them and I noticed them in others. I have also had trouble with Nautilus in distros not Solus.
That's the crappy thing about Linux many times: problems are many times individual to a single user and not other users...
Manjaro I have always avoided it seems to get the most mixed reviews. But I did test spin their Budgie on an iso. Not as bad as the worst Budgie which is Arch's weird FrankenBudgie but close🙂. I loved Endeavor. When Solus crashed into the iceberg earlier this year Endeavour was a pleasure. Seemed stable. But I gave the edge to Fedora and haven't regretted it. It's been a stable #2 next to Solus.
It took me about a year to find a #2 operating system that I thought would be #1 but now Solus is back. All to say I use them both, they are both reliable, and neither have bit me yet----like you I just wanted competent workstations and finally got them.
Unsure where your Solus headaches are coming from though. Maybe check out the devtracker and see if others have reported similar to yout symptoms. at least you've have corroboration.
