I use Artix (fork of Arch with init freedom)—the main reason why I prefer an Arch base specifically is for the AUR. The reason why I prefer a minimalistic distro in general, is because I want to be able to choose what software I install and how I set up my system. For example I don’t use a full DE so any distro that auto-installs a DE for me will install a bunch of software I won’t use. You also usually get a lot more control over partitioning etc with minimalistic distros—lets me fuck around with more weird setups if I want to try something out.

To be clear I don’t think there’s anything wrong with using distros that have more things “pre-packaged”. It’s a matter of personal preference. The category of “poweruser” makes sense—some users want more fine-grained control over their systems, whilst some users don’t care and want something that roughly works with minimal setup. Or perhaps you do care about fine-grained control over your system, but it just so happens that your ideal system is the same as what comes pre-installed with some distro. Do whatever works for you.

More software I wanted was packaged for Arch than Ubuntu.

the distro I’m daily driving uses arch as base so I just ride along

With Archinstall its really easy. You still need to be familiar with the Wiki, but its not hard. Tedious maybe. And running all vanilla software is nice. No distro modification.

I like the rolling updates, to be honest. Endeavour has been a wonderful and simple experience. Aside from some NVIDIA issues with Wayland it has been a blast.

Not a mean question at all. I haven’t had more difficulty keeping a working system than I did on Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora, etc. I get everything I need in Arch and the packages are always fresh off the grill. I also like the emphasis on text config files and a ground-up install. That helped me better understand my system and how it works.

No idea about performance. My performance recommendation is “don’t run Windows!” :)

After trying Ubuntu for a few days I decided to jump in head first and install Arch on my daily driver, it’s been a struggle but I learned so much about Linux I decided to work as a Sysadmin.

I don’t really understand the question. All you have to do is run archinstall and then add a desktop environment like KDE and that’s like 80% what other distros do.

I think arch used to be hard to get started but not anymore. That’s reserved for gentoo now

Because it is less trouble.

I read comments here all the time. People say Linux does not work with the Wifi on their Macs. Works with mine I say. Wayland does not work and lacks this feature or this and this. What software versions are you using I wonder, it has been fixed for me for ages.

Or how about missing software. Am I downloading tarballs to compile myself? No. Am I finding some random PPA? No. Is that PPA conflicting with a PPA I installed last year? No. Am I fighting the sandboxing on Flatpak? No. M I install everything on my system through the package manager.

Am I trying to do development and discovering that I need newer libraries than my distro ships? No. Am I installing newer software and breaking my package manager? No.

Is my system an unstable house of cards because of all the ways I have had to work around the limitations of my distro? No.

When I read about new software with new features, am I trying it out on my system in a couple days. Yes.

After using Arch, everything else just seems so complicated, limited, and frankly unstable.

I have no idea why people think it is harder. To install maybe. If that is your issue, use EndeavourOS.

I started using Linux in a time when package management was barely usable, and I had a broken distro as a first distro. Too often I was chasing down answers all over the internet when there were few to share, and the diy aspect of arch is rather nostalgic for me.

It’s the IKEA effect. You tend to like something more if you built it yourself.

Ease of use.

I’ve run the same CachyOS partition for 2 (3?) years, and I don’t do a freaking thing to it anymore. No fixes, no tweaking. It just works.

…Because the tweaks and rapid updates are constantly coming down the pipe for me. I pay attention to them and any errors, but it’s all just done for me! Whenever I run into an issue, a system update fixes it 90% of the time, and if it doesn’t it’s either coming or my own stupid mistake.

On Ubuntu and some other “slow” distros I was constantly:

• Fighting bugs in old packages

• Fighting and maintaining all the manual fixes for them

• Fighting the system which does not like me rolling packages forward.

• And breaking all that for a major system update, instead of incremental ones where breakage is (as it turns out) more manageable.

• I’d often be consulting the Arch wiki, but it wasn’t really applicable to my system.

I could go on and on, but it was miserable and high maintenance.

I avoided Fedora because of the 3rd party Nvidia support, given how much trouble I already had with Nvidia.

…It seems like a misconception that it’s always “a la carte” too. The big distros like Endeavor and Cachy and such pick the subsystems for you. And there are big application groups like KDE that install a bunch of stuff at once.

The more you want it to work your way, the less you want a prebuilt solution, and the more you want a rock solid package management system and repo setup. Debian derivatives work in a pinch, or for a server, not so great for a PC you want to do a lot of things on.

Funnily enough, I thought like you and was rocking Debian and various derivatives for years. Then one day, for some stupid reason (an out-of-date library for a side project in the Debian repo) and out of curiosity I tried arch.

Honestly have not looked back since for a bunch of reasons.

First, the package manager (pacman) is just awesome and extremely fast. I remember quickly ditching fedora in the past because, in part, of how goddamn slow dnf was.

Then, it’s actually much lower maintenance than I’d initially believed. I maybe had to repair something once after an update broke, and that was expected and documented so no problem there. Plus the rolling release model just makes it easier to update without having version jumps.

Talking of documentation, the wiki is really solid. It was a reference for me even before using arch anyways, so now it’s even better.

People also tend to value the customisability (it is indeed easier in a sense), the lack of bloat (like apps installed by default that you never use), and the AUR.

And, to be fair, a good share of people are probably also just memeing to death.

So I don’t know whether you’re missing something, it depends what you think Arch is like. If you believe it to be this monster of difficulty to install, where you essentially build your own system entirely etc etc… then yeah, you’re missing that it’s become much simpler than this. Otherwise if having more up-to-date software, easier ways to configure things and a rather minimal base install so you can choose exactly what you want on your system does not appeal to you, then likely arch is not going to be your thing.