Arch is so fast - Lemmy.world

Is Arch really that minimalistic? It’s been a few years for me, granted, but I recall they had no package granularity at all. No options to install headers on their own, shit like ssh-client and ssh-server only available bundled together, etc.
I think it depends on how you define minimalist. Is it about packages installed, size on disk, resources used at idle, resources available to applications while under load, or is it instead about minimize the time you spend working on the OS itself to allow you to maximize your time doing other things?