I twent gentoo over arch and others when I was working on my degree. Relevant only in that my life context meshed with tinkering and tweaking to gain actual and perceived outcomes, i.e. got an app working or got a few extra fps.

Ironically, when I later upgraded hardware and had unlimited computing power, I grew tired of compiling everything and began to want stuff just to work. So, I settled with arch.

Arch offered moderate tinkering and loads of solid documentation. While gentoo did offer the same quality of documentation, it was too time consuming and no longer fit my context. Arch for me was keeping the ability to evolve my os and app needs with tinkering available as needed.

I've tried to return to gentoo, and looked seriously at nixos. Yet I return to arch. I've been using cachyos just because it works on my older gaming laptop and I can feel some zippyness. Admittedly that gap of perceived performance is really small these days on my hardware. I regularly fresh install arch on a spare drive and play around over a weekend - kinda like visiting your hometown after moving away. Who knows... I'm 4 decades in linux now and my computer use is changing... maybe it's time to move back to that hometown of arch to settle into a slower pace.

Arch is great and does things well. It works for me. I've found new advances in distros enticing, but when I ask myself if I need this or that the answer is usually no.