EnveavourOS uses dracut in place of initramfs. It also uses NetworkManager in place of systemd-networkd.
What else is different?
The EndevourOS repo, yay installed out of the box, the community, the installer, some theming on certain DEs, the welcome menu, and I am sure someone will add some other things that I may have missed.
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These two things are not differences: Arch can use dracut and NetworkManager, too. And EndeavourOS can be easily configured to use initramfs (I use it) and networkd.
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More bloat. 
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Install instructions on the ArchWiki say different.
They are mere suggestions. You can install Arch however you want.
Dracut is in the Arch repos (the same package EndeavourOS is using) and so is NetworkManager.
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Different neofetch 
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According to the install instructions on ArchWiki:
Initramfs
Creating a new initramfs is usually not required, because mkinitcpio was run on installation of the kernel package with pacstrap.
So I guess that is what it “defaults” to installing the linux package (kernel):
# pacstrap -K /mnt base linux linux-firmware
One can perhaps already install dracut at this stage but the question is will it be run instead of mkinitcpio or the switch must be made afterwards? That is after mkinitcpio has already been run and generated the initramfs?
There is no mention of dracut on the installation page. So my guess is that is an option for more informed/advanced (?) users knowing what they want and what to do.
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In Archlinux, systemd-boot mounts the ESP partition /boot by default.
EOS systemd-boot mounts /efi
This is probably off-topic but you can pacstrap dracut instead of mkinitcpio. That is what we do in an online install.
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It is a hard thing to discretely quantify since there is no single way to install and configure Arch Linux.
In my opinion, here is what EOS provides:
- A graphical installation process
- online installs with a set of defaults that can be highly customized to the personal preferences
- offline installs are more opinionated with a fixed set of software and configurations installed
- A set of preconfigured environments for both WMs and DEs. These are optionally installed via the online installer. In the case of DEs, these are mostly very light customizations with the exception of xfce.
- A set of tools/scripts/applications to make getting started and maintaining the system easier.
- dracut instead of mkinitcpio
- An active, friendly and helpful community
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So doing: # pacstrap -K /mnt base linux linux-firmware will install dracut instead of mkinitcpio?
Will it run automatically upon installation of linux or it is needed to run it “manually” so to speak?
It’s OT, I know 
You do it by exploding base and replacing mkinitcpio with dracut
I guess all you need to do is add dracut to the package list.
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most importantly the amazing user community it offers and people are friendly.
most of the changes are to do with calamare installer and some very useful tweaks/tools that are part of the welcome screen.
EOS is still Arch as it uses its repo unlike Manjaro where they hold back for whatever reasons.
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For me top selling points are, clean and simple installer with sane defaults. I don’t like those fully bloated and pre-riced distros like Garuda and Xerolinux etc.
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I agree it’s an Arch install that works. Almost vanilla using the KISS philosophy. Ready to use and learn and make it your own. Some basic tools that help you use and maintain the system. A helpful, inviting community of like minded users.
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Interesting. So using dracut requires some manual intervention, whereas using mkinitcpio requires no change from the basic installation instructions as per the Arch Wiki? I wonder if Kermit knows?
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OP here… Thanks for this insight. I discovered dracut a while back and thought nothing of it. NetworkManager was a surprise and now I understand why I couldn’t get OpenSwitch to work – I was doing the wrong things to get it configured. I was just wondering if there’s anything else to watch for.
if I had to define EOS, I’d say it is “Archlinux for those short on time”. Make of this what you prefer
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This is not quite right. Mkinitcpio is not provided by the base package (see here: https://archlinux.org/packages/core/any/base/).
Mkinitcpio is included in the live ISO, and pacstrap uses it for creating the initial image, but unless you include it in your package list when you run pacstrap you will not get it by default. It is up to the user to install mkinitcpio or dracut on their own; installing one would not entail any more or less manual intervention than the other.
Ultimately, it would be mkinitcpio that would involve extra manual intervention; to produce a bootable image, the modules and hooks may need to be manually set in mkinitcpio.conf (where as dracut will determine what is needed automatically).