Arch is mainly for people who prefer instant updates on every software. Like developers, some hardcore gamers want to tweak their system too deep and have too much time to fix if it breaks.

Snapshots are a big relief, as they allow you to directly boot into the previous working version. But if the bootloader itself failed, you might need a live USB to fix it.

Arch is not bad or unfriendly at all. It allows users to deeply customize their system how they want it, and that's what causes an unstable system at the end. Also, the use of too many AUR softwares at the system level is another reason. It is not official. So by using AUR heavily, we can't guarantee it will work with other system software.

If you use Arch with snapshots and only install a minimal amount of AUR system-level software, then it's completely fine for daily use.

Other serious struggles.

• Very new releases bring a lot of bugs. Recently I saw my screen was flashing when I opened settings. Also, crashes can occur constantly. You have to report it to get an immediate fix from developers.

• Snapshots can take a fair amount of your storage. But you can control it in Snap.

• AUR packages are not tested for their authenticity or security at all.

• A breakage or failure to boot can terrify newbies. Unlike Fedora or Debian, there are no built-in recovery tools out of the box. Everything is the user's responsibility.

Arch is all about user freedom. All those crashes and failures are not too hard to fix, but you have to spend much time on them. If you have pre-cations like a live USB and snapshots, then there is nothing to worry about at all.

Unlike Windows, Linux demands users know it more and read long wiki pages, which is good in a sense.

Many people in the Linux community want their system built from scratch. So Arch stands in between, distributions like VoidLinux and Gentoo.

i use arch because i find it much easier to start from a system with just a tty and install software i need than to have a full distro and to find and remove packages that i don't want/need and replace them with the ones i need - makes maintenance easy and i know what's running on my system. it's also in my experience one of the few rare distros that package a non-broken fcitx5 which i rely on (but that's specific to my setup). and the build system is awesome. the community might be a bit harsh on people who post error messages to forums without any attempts at basic troubleshooting.

i expect that people who make these memes installed arch because they heard that it's a bleeding edge distro that all the kool kidz use, downloaded a bunch of packages from the AUR which messed up their dependencies after the update and now their system isn't booting right. if you don't skip updates for a long time and don't do weird tricks with system packages, arch might be genuinely one of the easiest distros once you get past the installation which can be tedious if you're used to automated installers.

I think it's like driving a manual transmission car in the US. You have more control and are more in tune with your car, but when you're stuck in bumper to bumper stop and go traffic it sucks ass. Similarly some people make it their identity and that's where the memes come from.