Then don't f*** with grub
Go with like gummiboot or syslinux
I read the Arch forums quite a bit, and have never heard of Grub and UUID issues.... Unless you don't use the right tag option to tell it to use UUIDs instead of /dev/sdawhatever....
Besides, aren't you using grub now? Its not like with arch you have to install arch grub... Grub is grub. Arch does push out the newest version pretty quick... But OK, don't install boot loader in arch,after install just reboot to your mint system (chroot in) add an entry for arch to /etc/grub.d/40_custom as shown
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Grub (probably in the advance config section) then let Mint handle Grub and it will stay an older more "stable" (yeah right, arch has been so much more stable then mint :P) version but will still boot your grub partition.... Again just skip installing a bootloader when you go through the default install, you have to choose one and do it manually anyways, not like something you will install on accident.
EDIT: You would add an entry like this
menuentry "Other Linux" {
set root=(hd0,2)
linux /boot/vmlinuz (add other options here as required)
initrd /boot/initrd.img (obviously on both lines make sure /boot/ is the correct directly but probably is)
}
Probably can avoid the concern over using UUIDs instead of hard drive numbers with the following info off the Wiki
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Gr ... _scripting
I think arch would work just as well for gaming... They were after all one of the first distros to have steam when it was only for Ubuntu. I have never seen a smarter userbase or better documentation... And I am not just limiting that to linux.
Most of your issues or things to sort out would be related to wine configuration yes?
And again, f*** desktops... I am not a child, I can use a console, remember what keys I mapped things to. If you haven't tried running just a window manager, do it... I think you will quickly realize that all you need is a way to manipulate windows, a way to launch the applications you need and a display of relevant information... I guess some kinda panel to show what is minimized if you use a floating window manager (why? use another desktop, don't minimize :P)