I (struggle to) use arch (in disposable VMs, not my actual machine) btw
my jokey response was already said by Allero, so I'll tell you what I think draws people to it.
- Early packages. As soon as the packages are shipped, arch tries to get them in the repo, stability and interoperability be damned
- Related to the above, AUR. You can't be bothered to build something? Get it from the AUR from someone who an be bothered to build it, but can't be bothered to be the maintainer of that package. This then leads to the issue recently with malware.
- Minimalism. Arch only gives you what you need and you need to set up everything else.
- No automated help, thus, total control and responsibility over your system. Installed a flatpak? Set up the executable in the application launcher yourself. (NB : your mileage may vary, I'm comparing LXQT arch with LXQT debian)
I'm using it in VMs only, and because setting it up is faster for me than setting up debian, which is my daily driver. Like I said many times in this thread, I slop it on using archinstall since it just needs the initial config, and I just walk away. The deb installer uses a wizard that "does stuff" while I go through it, so I have to stop and start. I'm only doing defaults anyway , so I don't have to change much in the installer.