Are linear tracking arms better than pivoted arms?

In the interest of full disclosure, I own a Souther, which is a liner tracker. I further state that I have owned it for years and am very happy with it and have no plans to replace it. However, I cannot agree that liner trackers are of necessity better.
Pivoted arms are well...fixed and steady. The liner arm sort of snakes its way along, never quite being steady. I once had a Phase Liner Turntable which used a servo controlled liner arm. It tracked the records well enough to avoid disaster, but never really sounded very good.
Also, I would like to point out that the Cantilever of many cartridges are very flexible and allow enough twist and general deformity to moot any discussion of exact angle. In short, general statements are not particularly helpful in such matters.

I have had liner tracking arms in the past, starting with the Marantz SL 12 in the 60s and some of the Technics tables in the 80s. Most of the audiophiles I know who have tried them have eventually given up on them. Some of them. like the Mapleknoll were incredibly hard to keep going, If you have the expertise and want to devote the time they give good results but I think for most of us the pivoted are just fine.

I would say linear arms separate the 'set and play' crowd from the 'I must twiddle.. endlessly' crowd. (Endless VTA fiddling is also in the twiddle crowd)
(Sorry to place it in such a negative context!)
I had a chance to buy a nice looking used Oracle with a linear tracker painstakingly engineered onto it. But it was obvious that it was the sort of table one would have to constantly fiddle with for every LP side, just to play.
(The most recent table at that same dealer is a masterpiece of fiddling! It would require at least ten minutes of work just to change a record side. Hand made, it looks like a giant aquarium. And would need two strong men to lift off the dustcover.. or should I call the oversized cover 'the plexiglass BLAST SHIELD'.)
Anyway..I am changing the direction of this post by saying "So what!" the pivoting arm often is far easier to maintain. And folks who need drama when they play records can have plenty with nearly any arm design if they just work at it.

Both linear track and pivot arms have their advantages, just like any two good technologies in high end audio that get compared in the forums here.

I've owned a lot of both types, the first linear tracker for me was the Rabco back in early 1970s. Since then I've had the ET with various pumps, the Versa Dynamics, Air Tangent 10B and Walker Proscenium Black Diamond. There are good and bad about all these, just as there are good and bad with pivot arms.

I currently own only pivot arms, I have four of them right now. I'm happy with the performance they provide but every time I see a photo of the Kuzma or the Rockport linear tracker I get the itch to try one again.

Guess you can put me in the "I like both" camp.

I swapped out a Linn LP12 for the Mitsubishi LT-30 I currently use. Without question, they are different animals. My LT-30 is far easier to set up than a pivoted table. Although my table has had a few upgrades (WBT connectors, extra damping, upgraded caps-transistors-tonearm wire) for higher torque speed control and overall cleaner sound, I hesitate ever going back to pivoted. I have a pivoted as a backup. To each their own.