Compared to i3 it is, but I admit that’s not a fair comparison as i3 is going for a very specific style that is cheap to implement.

As an Arch user I hate these memes. Guys, the only difference between distros is effectively the versions of packages you’re getting, and what the default packages and configs are. In Ubuntu you are completely free to have a very minimal i3 setup (I did for several years!) while in Arch you can use some bloated Gnome UI. This “Arch is fast and Ubuntu is slow” really isn’t true if you compare Arch-Gnome vs Ubuntu-Gnome, or Arch-i3 vs Ubuntu-i3.