[arch-general] things specific to Arch?

[bill .]

Hello everyone,

New member here and new Arch user having come over from arch-based Manjaro. I admit i installed with Architect and am thankful for it as i don't know that i would have been able to do so without it. So far my experience has been a good one, but i know i have much to learn.

One thing that puzzles me is with every other linux i've used i formatted a usb flash drive with the command sudo mkdosfs -n xxxx -I /dev/sdx where x's are specific to file names and disk drives. This does not work in my Arch (the development version and lxqt. Is there a different way specific to Arch, or something i need to download to get this function?

Also, usually when i first install a linux there are updates, sometimes tons of them. When i use pacman -Syu it says there is nothing to update. Is this common/ correct?

I appreciate Arch for its up to date repository, among many other things. There are just a few things i need to know in order to use it better. Good to be a part of the real deal. Many thanks for your time!
peace
-bill