If you want to make pacman feel really fast, try DNF.
brb while I install Fedora or CentOS8 and wipe out all my stuff. In other words, both of those distros on the desktop are the same good idea as arch on the server.
Speaking from experience.
Oh right, it does feel that way. Somehow the package manager didn't come to my mind when I said that :-) anything else you've noticed?