Comment by q0uaur

if you actually care about bloat, by far the best* thing to do is set up arch linux manually (no archinstall script) and just install the packages you actually need. it's insane how little it actually takes to get a working system.

it's a bunch of effort though, both to learn how everything works and to set up all the things you're usually just used to being there by default. but once it's done you'll be able to fix any issue that pops up, because you actually KNOW what's on your system, as opposed to it being a massive collection of things you have no idea about.

*something like gentoo might be better but... compiling a browser takes ages and i recommend having an up to date browser, so you'll spend tons of time on that.