If you read the man page for pacman, it helps. S stands for synchronise, Q for query (local), F is for find (remote), R is for remove. The following sub options (yu after -S) are specific to each main option.
Honestly I’m a little surprised it’s so low relative to linux. It definitely has a strong presence. I’m thinking it won’t be as popular because of the lower cost to value ratio
Also another thing you are wrong about: You may be surprised to know that the second hand market for computer electronics is non-existent. As far as I know, there are only a handful of cities in the whole country where there is a second hand local market. Cheap electronics don’t last that much and in laptops there are only so many components you can buy separately and install. (Overwhelming majority of the computers are laptops, not the traditional CPU towers)
Also another thing I failed to mention is, the government tried to make a distro for govt use at one point but idk if anything came out of that. But I want to say there’s definitely a growing presence of linux here
Ok as an Indian allow me to interject. The reason people use linux is not because of poverty. Even the cheapest laptops come preloaded with activated windows.
We get introduced to Linux based OSs in schools. That plus people are heavily pushed into engineering and lately computer science and software engineering.