The shortest answer -

Arch has really good documentation and a release style that works for a lot of people.

Ubuntu is coorporitized and less reliable Debian with features that many people dont need or want.

About 10 years ago it was The Distro for first time linux users to prove they were a True Linux Enjoyer. Think a bunch of channers bragging about how they are the true linux master race because they edited a grub config.

Before Arch that role belonged to Gentoo. Since then that role has transitioned to NixOS who aren’t nearly as toxic but still culty. “Way of the future” etc.

All three of have high bars of entry so everyone has to take pride in the effort they put in to learn how to install their distro. Like getting hazed into a frat except you actually learn something.

The Ubuntu hatred is completely unrelated. That has to do with them being a corporate distro that keep making bad design decisions. And their ubiquity means everyone has to deal with their bad decisions. (snap bad)

I use Ubuntu professionally and Arch at home

Anything that’s not Windows is my preference.

I love arch because I know what’s in it and how to fix it and what to expect, the community is mostly very nice and open to help

AUR is great and using pacman feels lovely

I also care about learning and understanding the system I’m using beyond just using a GUI that does everything for me

Ubuntu is not bad it’s probably one of the most used distros by far

Linux motto is: Use what you like and customize it how you like because there is no company forcing you to do things their way

I like arch because:

• it is rolling release and I like having up to date software and not having to deal with distro upgrades breaking things
• it is community run and not beholden to a company
• packages are mostly unmodified from their upstream
• the wiki and forums are the best of any distro

vocal peope on social media ≠ everyone

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.

Arch Being cult like is stereotypical. Far from reality.

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 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.

Because Arch requires human sacrifice.

Arch is amazing for what it is, hence the love. It’s what you make of it; by default there’s nothing and you design your own system from scratch. This leads to a very passionate and enthusiastic community who do great work for one another, for everybody’s benefit. Anything under the sun can be found in the AUR, the distro repos are fresh and reliable, and every issue that arises has a hundred people documenting the fix before it’s patched.

Ubuntu has a bad reputation for inconsistency, privacy invasive choices, etc. I don’t think all the hate is deserved, as they corrected course after the Amazon search fiasco, but I still won’t use it because of Snaps. They have a proprietary backend, so even if I wanted to put up with their other strange design decisions I can’t unless I wanted closed source repos. That goes against my whole philosophy and reasoning for being on Linux to begin with, and many feel the same.

So I love Debian but it prides itself on stability so packages tend to be older. I think this is good for a server but probably not great for a desktop. Ubuntu came along and was like we’ll be like Debian but newer packages. Everything was cool for a while but then they started doing shitty things. The first that I can think of was ads in the terminal. This was not great for an open source app. Then when you did apt install firefox it installed Firefox as a snap. WTF?!?!? (apt should install .deb files, not snaps). Because of this, lately I’ve decided to avoid Ubuntu.

I used Gentoo for a while and it was great but configuring and compiling everything took forever. I’m getting too old for that. Arch seems like a good alternative for people who want to mess with their system. So it’s become a way for people to claim they know what they are doing without having to recompile everything. (Note: I haven’t used Arch, this is just my perception)

Recently I got a new laptop and I had decided to put Linux on it and had to decide what distro. Arch was in consideration but I ended up going with OpenSUSE Tumbleweed because it’s got the latest but I don’t really have to configure anything. If I had more time, I might go with something like Arch but I don’t really want to do that much fiddling right now.

We’re not a cult. Come on out to our compound and we’ll show you!

Anything really polarizing can end up with a cult following. Just look at Rust.

I don’t really have a concise answer, but allow me to ramble from personal experience for a bit:

I’m a sysadmin that was VERY heavily invested in the Microsoft ecosystem. It was all I worked with professionally and really all I had ever used personally as well. I grew up with Windows 3.1 and just kept on from there, although I did mess with Linux from time to time.

Microsoft continues to enshittify Windows in many well-documented ways. From small things like not letting you customize the Start menu and task bar, to things like microstuttering from all the data it’s trying to load over the web, to the ads it keeps trying to shove into various corners. A million little splinters that add up over time. Still, I considered myself a power user, someone able to make registry tweaks and PowerShell scripts to suit my needs.

Arch isn’t particularly difficult for anyone who is comfortable with OSes and has excellent documentation. After installation it is extremely minimal, coming with a relatively bare set of applications to keep it functioning. Using the documentation to make small decisions for yourself like which photo viewer or paint app to install feels empowering. Having all those splinters from Windows disappear at once and be replaced with a system that feels both personal and trustworthy does, in a weird way, kind of border on an almost religious experience. You can laugh, but these are the tools that a lot of us live our daily lives on, for both work and play. Removing a bloated corporation from that chain of trust does feel liberating.

As to why particularly Arch? I think it’s just that level of control. I admit it’s not for everyone, but again, if you’re at least somewhat technically inclined, I absolutely believe it can be a great first distro, especially for learning. Ubuntu has made some bad decisions recently, but even before that, I always found myself tinkering with every install until it became some sort of Franken-Debian monster. And I like pacman way better than apt, fight me, nerds.