Looking at this, I'm curious which one you got. One thing to realize is that Gnome is a desktop manager, you can get Gnome on numerous Linuxes (Linii?), for example, Manjaro offers one. The real big difference with Arch is that its a rolling release unlike say Debian, which is to say that like Windows or Mac it updates.
The basic Linux is pretty much the same size regardless of whether its an RPM, DEB or Arch its the interface that makes the difference. With Linux you get three basic choices CLI (text based), windows manager and desktop environment. The line between those last two can be a bit blurry, see OpenBox for an example, but pure WM's like JWM or I3 WM are very light, albeit it comes at a cost. Tiling WM's for example don't allow Windows to over lap, and they decide the layout, which might not be for the best. Also many use the PCMan file manager as its lighter than competitors, but that comes at a cost, visually at least as I've noted.
As to PacMan, sounds like the distro you're using is a Gnome, Budgie or Xfce, can't remember how you check that though (Xfce just get info under help in the file manager, if its using Thunar, its Xfce), KDE/QT builds usually use Octopi which sucks in my not so humble opinion. All I can tell you is that when it comes to Arch builds, those are what they use, and PacMan works fairly well.
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The basic Linux is pretty much the same size regardless of whether its an RPM, DEB or Arch its the interface that makes the difference. With Linux you get three basic choices CLI (text based), windows manager and desktop environment. The line between those last two can be a bit blurry, see OpenBox for an example, but pure WM's like JWM or I3 WM are very light, albeit it comes at a cost. Tiling WM's for example don't allow Windows to over lap, and they decide the layout, which might not be for the best. Also many use the PCMan file manager as its lighter than competitors, but that comes at a cost, visually at least as I've noted.
As to PacMan, sounds like the distro you're using is a Gnome, Budgie or Xfce, can't remember how you check that though (Xfce just get info under help in the file manager, if its using Thunar, its Xfce), KDE/QT builds usually use Octopi which sucks in my not so humble opinion. All I can tell you is that when it comes to Arch builds, those are what they use, and PacMan works fairly well.