You might also try "Arch-Anywhere". It's got a very nice install script, and is minimal. You'll end up with a very basic installation of Arch, probably similar to the one you'd get with a more manual installation. This is how I got started using Arch, and I've learned more about Linux than I ever would have been able to with Ubuntu or Debian.

https://arch-anywhere.org/

Arch has turned out, surprisingly to be much easier to maintain, since things are well documented and consistent.

> Arch has turned out, surprisingly to be much easier to maintain, since things are well documented and consistent.

Agreed. I've moved all my private servers [1] to Arch, despite everyone warning that it will break all the time, and I've never experienced any sort of breakage (except when I did stupid things myself).

[1] Currently, there are three: one physical machine as a homeserver, and two VPS for public services.

If your first installs are going to be gcc and i3, then I think you should give the standard Arch install a shot. It takes a basic understanding of what's happening during the install process, and I'm guessing if you're kicking off with i3 then you're comfortable with things like partitioning and configuring a window manager. If that's the case, installing Arch will teach you things that an Ubuntu install definitely won't, and you get a fresh clean minimal install too.

There is a community distro of Manjaro which already includes i3: https://sourceforge.net/projects/manjaro-i3/

It was a big help to get more into i3. It also includes a lot of helper scripts. I used them in the beginning to get things done and later switched over to the "real" commands. inst -> pacman is an example for that.