If you want to understand how the parts of a working Linux system come together build Linux From Scratch once, fully manually while going through every step. A

If you want to understand how the parts of a working Linux system come together build Linux From Scratch once, fully manually while going through every step. Arch Linux is like every other binary Linux distribution, only more difficult to admin for no reason. Hell if you squint hard enough even Gentoo has more of a reason to exist. A package managed that is source code first.