How exactly is Arch barebones? It basically ships with everything I need, more than most distros (Zed and Discord are good examples). I don't even need to use the AUR.
Pretty much every browser that isn't Firefox including Chrome, VS Code, most proprietary software like Slack, Zoom, Spotify, many vpn clients and password managers, a lot of them seemingly not published by the companies in question.
All of those ancillary password, vpn or security related products who aren't going to be in the main repo because they have proprietary elements and also rely on random people seems particularly bad. And there's a lot of software in that category.
Just by taking a glance at the most popular packages (https://aur.archlinux.org/packages)
Pretty much every browser that isn't Firefox including Chrome, VS Code, most proprietary software like Slack, Zoom, Spotify, many vpn clients and password managers, a lot of them seemingly not published by the companies in question.
All of those ancillary password, vpn or security related products who aren't going to be in the main repo because they have proprietary elements and also rely on random people seems particularly bad. And there's a lot of software in that category.