No idea, but ArchWiki has some of the best linux documentation around.

I’m not sure either. I think arch used to be one of the less popular distros (because of the more involved install process, solved now by the arch-based distros with friendly installers), despite having some of the best features, so it required more “evangelism”, that’s unecessary now. Arch-based distros are now some of the most popular ones, so its not necessary.

Others have commented on why its so great, but the AUR + Rolling releases + stability means that arch is one of the “stable end states”. You might hop around a lot, but its one of the ones you end up landing on, and have no reason to change from.

I think Arch is so popular because its considered a middle of the road distro. Even if not exactly true, Ubuntu is seen as more of a pre-packaged distro. Arch would be more al a carte with what you are actually running. I started with Slackware back in the day when everything was a lot more complicated to get setup, and there was even then this notation that ease of access and customization were separate and you can’t have both. Either the OS controls everything and its easy or you control everything and its hard. To some extent that’s always going to be true, but there’s no reason you can’t or shouldn’t try to strike a balance between the two. I think Arch fits nicely into that space.

I also wouldn’t use the term “cultists” as much as “aholes”. If you’ve ever been on the Arch forums you know what I’m talking about. There is a certain kind of dickish behavior that occurs there, but it somewhat is understandable. A lot of problems are vaguely posted (several times over) with no backing logs or info to determine anything. Just “Something just happened. Tell me how to fix it?”. And on top of that, those asking for help refuse to read the wiki or participate in the problem solving. They just want an online PC repair shop basically.

People making the things they consume their whole personality, not a rare thing tbh.

IMO Despite some unjustified rumors Arch is a very stable distro. For me it feels the same as Debian stability wise while still being on the cutting edge side. The Arch wiki is the second most important reason.

I installed arch before there was the official install script. It’s not that is was THAT difficult, but it does provide a great sense of accomplishment, you learn a lot, customize everything, and you literally only install things you know you want. (Fun story: I had to start over twice: the first time I forgot to install sudo, the second I forgot to install the package needed to have an internet connection)

All of this combined mean that the users have a sense of pride for being an arch user so they talk about it more that the rest. There is no pride in clicking your way though an installer that makes all the choices for you

“I run Arch btw” became a meme because until install scripts became commonplace you had to have a reasonable understanding of the terminal and ability to read and follow instructions to install Arch Linux to a usable state. “Look at my l33t skills.”

Dislike of Ubuntu comes from Canonical…well…petting the cat backwards. They go against the grain a lot. They’re increasingly corporate, they did a sketchy sponsorship thing with Amazon at one point, around ten years ago they were in the midst of this whole “Not Invented Here” thing; all tech had to be invented in-house, instead of systemd they made and abandoned Upstart, instead of working on Wayland they pissed away time on Mir, instead of Gnome or KDE they made Unity, and instead of APT they decided to build Snap. Which is the one they’re still clinging to.

For desktop users there are a lot better distros than Ubuntu these days.

I left Ubuntu for Arch because I got sick of Arch having everything I wanted and Ubuntu taking ages to finally get it. I was tired of compiling shit all the time just to keep up to date.

Honestly glad I made the change, too. Arch has been so much better all around. Less bloat and far fewer problems.

Arch is better because…

• pacman, seriously, I don’t hear enough of how great pacman is.
  Being able to search easily for files within a package is a godsend when some app refuses to work giving you an error message “lib_obscure.so.1 cannot be found”.
  I haven’t had such issues in a long time, but when I do, I don’t have to worry about doing a ten hour search, if I’m lucky, for where this obscure library file is supposed to be located and in what package it should be part of.
• rolling release. Non-rolling Ubuntu half-year releases have broken my OS in the past around 33% of the time. And lots of apps in the past had essential updates I needed, but required me to wait 5 months for the OS to catch up.
• AUR. Some apps can’t be found anywhere but AUR.
• Their wiki is the best of all Linuxes

The “cult” is mostly gushing over AUR.

Normal people who use Arch don’t bring it up much, because they’re all sick of the memes and are really, REALLY tired of immediately being called rude elitist neckbeard cultists every time they mention it.

The Ubuntu hate is because Canonical has a long history of making weird, controversial decisions that split the Linux community for no good reason.

I just think it’s neat.

Arch Hits the great spot

It has:

• a great wiki
• many packages, enough for anything you want to do
• its the only distros that is beetween everything done for you and gentoo-like fuck you.
• and the Memes.

vocal peope on social media ≠ everyone

Arch Being cult like is stereotypical. Far from reality.