The short answer is because I’m lazy. I might lose 30 min during the system setup instead of 20, and now I have a system that I don’t have to worry about until the hardware gives up.

Arch is a rolling release distro, which means it’s unstable, which doesn’t mean what you think, instead it means that you can update your system indefinitely without worrying about “versions”. For example, if you had Ubuntu 20.04 installed on your server, in may you had to update it to 24.04, and that’s something that can cause issues. And in 2029 you’ll need to go through that again. Arch is just constant updates without having that worry. Which means no library is safe from updates, ergo unstable.

Also the AUR is huge, and I’m a lazy ass who likes to just be able to install stuff without having to add PPAs or installing stuff by hand.

Also there’s the whole customize the system, I use a very particular set of programs that just won’t come pre installed anywhere, so any system that comes with their own stuff will leave me in a system with double the amount of programs for most stuff which is just wasteful.

Finally there’s the wiki, while the vast majority of what’s there serves you in other systems, if you’re running Arch it’s wonderful, it even lists the packages you need to install to solve specific errors.

Some people are enthusiasts that want to take the training wheels off and challenge themselves. I use CachyOS, which is Arch-based, because it thrashes everything else almost every time in speed tests. Thus far, it hasn’t proven to be more complicated than the Debian-based distros I’ve used. I also wasn’t expecting better features in Arch with certain programs. Being able to get the absolute newest version of a package at all times has proven to be much more useful to me than detrimental.

I use Arch via Manjaro distribution. Yes, there’s some quirks coming from Ubuntu, but basically installing OSS/propreitary software using Pacman/Yay/Add/Remove Software is such a breeze, and it’s main selling point to me of Arch so I stay with the distro and say good bye to Debian-based one.

Honestly, in the long term it has been less effort.

If you’re an “out-od-the-box” comouter user (web browser, maybe one or two apps, and office suite, then stick with the more conventional distros. If you are very dynamic with your OS, especially 8f you play with a lot of different OSS applications, then Arch get’s easier.

Believe it or not, it’s still less work than NixOS (at least for a daily-driver OS)

I’m a certified Linux professional of over 15yrs and I have never installed Arch. Not once, never needed it. It offers nothing I can’t either build myself or just install Debian and change what I need it to be.

More software I wanted was packaged for Arch than Ubuntu.

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.

because it’s less work. i don’t have to strip out what a distro thinks i want. i don’t have to worry about major distro releases that might have changes that need manual intervention. if there are updates that need manual intervention, they’re small, easy to deal with and usually do not effect me. everything is well documented and standard. packages are installed with default settings/config (to my understanding), so i can easily read upstream documentation and not have to deal with weirdness. getting packages that are obscure is easier. i don’t have to worry about upstream having a fix, or supporting something that i need but my distro not having the update in their repo. it’s just simpler and easier to manage (for my use case)

Because AUR.

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

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.

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 learning and having control over my pc. But it’s mainly the learning part for me, followed the wiki a second time installing arch on my Thinkpad last week and felt just as satisfied as the first time. But no shame in using archinstall.

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