[RGamma]

AFAIAA the joke comes from Arch's purported superiority (rolling release, close to upstream, bleeding edge, KISS) as compared to "bloated/slow" e.g. Ubuntu. It's kinda old now and existed even before the controversial switch to systemd from SysVinit/rc.conf.

[godelski]

Tbh I thought that it was because people are scared of the terminal, this even somehow includes people who have used Linux for a decade. That and that basically you're forced to use the terminal for Arch and read the instructions.

So kinda like how people joke about Ikea furniture being difficult to build. I mean... it's not, it's quite intuitive. But even if it wasn't then it's purely an exercise in ability to read instructions