There's a pyramid of bragging rights when it comes to Linux, I think.
The "just works" distros, like Ubuntu, Mint, and Pop_OS!, for instance, is mainly used by normal people who don't brag much about their OS, if at all. You kinda can't brag at this stage. The less-mainstream ones, like Debian, still a bit of bragging, but it's not much. As you go up, and as the userbase narrows, the bragginess of a stereotypical user will increase.
By the time you get to Arch and its ilk, though, that's where it all goes to shit. This is where the upper echelon of bragging rights begins. There's a reason why "BTW I use Arch" is a common phrase, whether it's said in jest or in earnest. It's like vegans; you'll know they're an Arch user, because they'll tell you the moment you speak to them. For bonus points, they'll also use dwm as their window manager, mpv as a media player, and/or anything-not-systemd for an init system, because of course they do.
Don't even get me started on Gentoo; there's perfectly normal people on there, but ricers will tell you about how they got 2% more performance by putting some bullshit-ass CFLAGS like -O9, -funroll-all-loops, --disable-all-instructions (2 of these are parody, 1 is an actual GCC flag, but still horrendously inadvisable in almost all cases). The previous stuff about Arch users applies here too.
Linux From Scratch... that's just for people with far too much time on their hands, more a learning experience than an OS you'd use daily. You're basically maintaining an entire distro by yourself; every patch and update needs to be done manually, and you have to be always be listening to news about this to stay up-to-date. At least Gentoo has a team of people maintaining it for you. The bragging rights come from completing it, not from daily-driving it.
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Topic: Random thoughts - On the Origins of "I Could Eat A Horse" (Read 220506 times)