For me the big difference with Arch is that you choose all the different pieces (networking, disk setup, desktop environment, login manager, etc.), so when something goes wrong, you know exactly where to look. If something goes wrong in Ubuntu, especially as a beginner all you can do is google "Ubuntu wifi disconnecting" or whatever. It's definitely more work to get installed, but you come away with something very personal, that you understand very well.
Yeah, but then you’re on the hook for maintenance too. Maybe you installed a while ago with Pulse and WPA supplicant, but now you need to know they are replaced with Pipewire and IWD. And you have to swap them out manually yourself.
Installing Arch is the easy part. The maintenance is what gets ya.
