That's been my experience too. A good FD is way easier to maintain and way more reliable. Quiet too, never realised how much noise chains made until I tried FD.
Tires prolly wear out a little earlier maybe, but tires are cheap and the work is easy.
Set it up so the friction roller is 100 percent perpendicular to the tire and you'll have no problems. I rotate my tires every 500 miles to even out the wear and I have close to 2000 miles on my current set of tires.