I use arch and I never can't find a 'reasonable' package in pacman. If I'm installing something weird or proprietary (e.g., Skype) I just get it from the arch unsupported repo, which is just as easy using a tool called packer. I've never come across something I wanted that I couldn't get from one of those sources.

I'd say if anything it's better than apt-get since the packages are updated so often!