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pacman iirc

It still uses pacman.

I can't confirm this, but it feels like Arch linux has surged in popularity over the last ~3-4 years. I ditched Debian for Arch in 2016 and haven't looked back.

Maybe you are thinking of Gentoo? Arch’s core and community software are distributed as binaries that have been compiled for you.

The AUR provides additional software you can compile yourself but most of what makes the system run already built.