Bragging rights are for memes. The actual appeal is a system that just runs (and runs and runs without needing reinstalls or complete upgrade overhauls, thx rolling release), and that you can actually modify (or repair) because it's close to upstream and does not stack one set of configurations on top of the build-in configs and another GUI tool (or two) again managing its own settings on top. All to isolate users from that somehow scary terminal...