Linux

When it comes to Arch the wiki is your friend. It will tell you if additional configuration is required to get your packages working and what other dependencies can be installed. If something isn't working properly then the wiki probably knows why.

Arch comes with no drivers and additional packages by default. You need to install them manually. But you don't need to install every package for your system manually. If you need glibc it will most certainly get pulled down as a dependency.

You don't need to know every part of the system to use arch but you need to be interested enough to learn how your system works if something is not working or you want to configure your system in a certain way.

For starters I would recommend going with something Arch-based like Garuda or EndeavorOS if you want to learn Arch. I started off with my Steam Deck and later Garuda on my desktop. Once I was comfortable enough around Arch I decided to install vanilla Arch (manually, the wiki way) in a VM. When installing my system I wrote down every command I used and from that it snowballed in to my own install script for arch. That taught me a lot.