There’s nothing inherently superior, just what people like more. If you want to use Mint that’s totally fine and valid.

Moved over from Mint to Arch for gaming, which has some additional benefits:

• more up-to-date kernel and more up-to-date Mesa, which brings very noticeable improvements in frame rates - in Elden Ring for example, 45 fps outside in Mint to 60 fps outside on Arch

• my desktop soundcard isn’t recognised properly by PulseAudio but is by PipeWire. It’s hard to be sure that PulseAudio is completely gone when you uninstall it then reinstall something else. Arch, I just installed what I wanted in the first place

• some utility programmes, like CoreCtrl for graphics card fan and power tweaking, and emulators like RPCS3, are the Arch repositories but not the Mint ones. Much easier to keep them up-to-date

• for a gaming machine, no more ‘mystery services’ that I don’t know what they are. I quite like having everything quite stripped back for a gaming machine. On Arch, I know what everything does because I installed it. That’s not the case on Mint.

Obviously, I installed the Cinnamon desktop as my GUI choice - there’s certain things about Mint that are tremendous and worth sticking to.

For me, it’s:

• All software is shipped with as few changes as possible from upstream, so I’m getting the software as intended. If there’s an issue, it’s likely due to the software, not my distribution’s unicorn configuration.
• Pacman. This includes PKGBUILDs, syntax, and speed.
• Good support. For all that this distribution isn’t “the standard”, you find install instructions in places you wouldn’t expect, and more difficult things tend to work on Arch more easily than on other distributions.
• Easy to set new things up. Because Arch doesn’t ship with much configuration, there’s no existing configuration you need to investigate in order to wrangle it to work with something new. This is also a downside, but we’ll get to that…
• Inertia. I installed it a few years ago, and I kind of want to move to openSUSE or Fedora, but I’m too comfortable here.

Downsides:

• You need to configure everything. That includes the security stuff like AppArmor and SELinux you don’t understand.
• Occasional breakages. Arch doesn’t break that often, but it’s annoying when it does. Usually visiting bbs.archlinux.org is enough to set you on the right path.
• Some software is packaged more slowly than other rolling distributions. Notably, GNOME is usually packaged a few months after openSUSE and Fedora ship it.
• Constant updates! And HUGE updates, at that! Not great for computers you don’t use often. If you do, make sure to pacman -Sy archlinux-keyring before you install new updates.

Arch and Gentoo have IMO the best documentation ever and you learn a lot when you try using either of those distributions as you have to do everything from scratch starting from a minimal system. Since you’re saying you’re new to Linux though, I’d say you should start with something more user-friendly like Mint or Ubuntu (or even Manjaro if you want a rolling release distro) and stay away from Arch and Gentoo in the beginning.

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Arch is always “latest and greatest” for every package, including the kernel. It lets you tinker, and it’s always up to date. However, a rolling release introduces more ways to break your system - things start conflicting under the hood in ways that you weren’t aware of, configurations that worked don’t any longer, etc.

This is in contrast to everything built on Debian, which Mint is one example of - Mint adds a bunch of conveniences on top, but the underlying “how it all fits together” is still Debian. What Debian does is to set a target for stable releases and ship a complete set of known-stable packages. This makes it great for set and forget uses, servers that you want to just work and such. And it was very important back in the 90’s when it was hard to get Internet connectivity. But it also means that it stays behind the curve with application software releases, by periods of months to a year+. And the original workaround to that is “just add this other package repository” which, like Arch, can eventually break your system by accident.

But neither disadvantage is as much of a problem now as it used to be. More of the software is relatively stable, and the stuff you need to have the absolute latest for, you can often find as a flatpak, snap, or appimage - formats that are more self-contained and don’t rely on the dependencies that you have installed, just “download and run.”

Most popular distros now are Arch or Debian flavored - same system, different veneer. Debian itself has become a better option for desktop in recent years just because of improvements to the installer.

I’ve been using Solus 4.4 lately, which has its own rolling-release package system. Less software, but the experience is tightly designed for desktop, and doesn’t push me to open terminals to do things like the more classical Unix designs that guide Arch and Debian. The problem both of those face as desktops is that they assume up-front that you may only have a terminal, so the “correct way” of doing everything tends to start and end with the terminal, and the desktop is kind of glued on and works for some things but not others.

For everyone saying the wiki, you don’t have to be an Arch user to love the wiki. I’m on Solus but use the Arch wiki frequently.

Arch has the newest software, whereas most of Linux Mint’s software is usually a few years out of date except for security patches.

Arch is also a lot more “DIY” compared to Linux Mint’s “It Just Works”

I use mint and I really like it. It’s an easy familiar transition from windows.

Arch is for user’s who want to start with a completely blank slate. Like there’s no file system when you start, as far as I know. Think of arch like windows but nothing is installed, not even explorer.exe

Well, Arch is not inherently better, it depends on your needs. If you want up-to-date packages and don’t mind the do it yourself approach you’ll love Arch. I’ve used Arch for a few years and learned a lot from it. I love the minimalism. Now I switched to a minimal install of Sway on Debian because I just want a tried and tested stable system. I am at a point of my life where I want a really boring install. Instead of tinkering with the system I use it as a base to learn more on the server side, and learn more coding, etc

Probably already said here, but it’s going to just come down to your end goal to know what distro fits what you’re looking for.

I am personally a huge fan of Gentoo, another distro that’s all about “from the ground up” approach. It’s actually where I started with Linux and is how I became as proficient in it as I am today. In fact my internal server that does everything is running Gentoo as it’s OS… Has never had any problems in the last decade that would require a reinstall or anything crazy like that.

But even as much love as I have for Gentoo, I have Linux Mint installed on my laptop. Why? Because it’s just more convenient when I need my full focus on the 10 other personal projects I’m working on… Also amazing on the gaming front. Doesn’t have nearly as much bloat as some other Ubuntu-based distros on first install, has a huge community support, and is just great all around to have.

As someone who has used both as my primary operating system the main reason I ended up on Arch is the Arch User Repository (AUR).

The AUR allows you to run installation scripts for apps that aren’t supported by the official repositories and pretty much everything you could ever want is there.

The other big thing I liked is the Arch Wiki documents everything really well, and I preferred the kinds of answers I found there and on the Arch forums to the Ubuntu/Mint forums.

At the time, operating system overhead was extremely important to me and a window manager like i3 or awesome was less resource intensive than Mint’s Cinnamon Desktop Environment (DE).

All of that being said though, because Arch doesn’t ship with a DE getting started will require a configuring a lot of things using old school text based configuration files. The Mint installed on the other hand leaves you with a very capable and functional system as soon as you finish installing it.

If you want something that works right out of the box, I would recommend Mint. If you want a project give Arch a shot!

Package base is always up to date since it’s rolling. The AUR is absolutely fantastic and gives me any obscure application I could ever need. You ever tried installing the marathon trilogy with alephone on fedora? The AUR makes it a single button install. I’m currently running endeavour OS plasma, such a smooth experience.

arch is for noobs. linux from scratch is a little better

One of arch’s things is it’s a rolling release distro, which means that every bit of arch is updated as soon as an update is available for it. Mint on the other hand tests the package updates before they release it to make sure its stable, but this results in the packages being out of date.