I love the big and supportive community and the rolling release model.
Also lots of software between the official Repos and the AUR
Because it’s actually simple to understand. There are different forms of complexity and one of the worst is when someone else has built something and you are trying to figure out how it works. Like Fedora, Ubuntu or whatever.
With arch you install the system yourself so you know what you have on it. Therefore problem solving is a lot easier. You put data into the config files so you know what you did.
People run their arch systems for years and never reinstalling. Sure, you will have some bugs but the arch wiki is amazing to help you fix them.
I wouldn’t quite call Arch simple because it is probably not for most newbies who want a turnkey system. By newbie, I mean somebody that’s only ever used a modern verison of Windows - in other words, they’ve never had to scratch the surface of computer usage. They have no idea what a partition is or even what a bootloader is for that matter. Arch’s install tends to be somewhat terse by comparison but it’s great for somebody comfortable with the command line and somebody having enough background knowledge. I can install Arch in a fraction of the time that it takes to install other distros.
The community is incredible but also the fact that is a rolling release. You get to experience the latest and greatest of everything and don’t need a big migration from a version to another.
The AUR package repository (user contributed) is huge and most of the time you can find an obscure little open source project in there but also commercial software nicely packaged for the distrib.
The stability of arch is impressive too. Often being a rolling release you fix problem along the way but as the steps are small they are well identified and quickly resolved. On Ubuntu when you do a distupgrade you are up for so much pain at once sometimes it might be hard to upgrade.
I hope it helps!
In a nutshell, I like it because it is a very lightweight distribution. The install process forces you to really learn what is going on with your computer. You know what’s going to be installed and what will be running. It doesn’t get in your way and hide things from you.
