Have recently switched from using Solr+acts_as_solr to Sphinx+Thinkinh Sphinx I have found quite the opposite. Thinking Sphinx is simpler than Solr and required no 'fiddling'.
I had to work around some problems in acts_as_solr, such as it's tendency to automatically update solr as soon as a DB record changed (regardless if no fields that solr is indexing have changed). Thinking Sphinx simply updates it's index in a batch process that is called by cron (and is super fast!). I highly recommend it.
I had to work around some problems in acts_as_solr, such as it's tendency to automatically update solr as soon as a DB record changed (regardless if no fields that solr is indexing have changed). Thinking Sphinx simply updates it's index in a batch process that is called by cron (and is super fast!). I highly recommend it.