1. Arch linux anyone? Distro choices blah blah.

[dom at latter.org]

Daniel Cohen wrote:
> I'll second this. Arch Linux was the distro that finally stopped me from 
> hopping. The best package manager ever, a great community with 
> exceptional helpful irc *glares at ubuntu* and a plethora of packages, 
> not to mention all the user made packages in one central place (it's 
> really easy to make your own too).

I don't really "get" IRC - I like the considered responses you get from
mailing lists and Usenet, and the easy-to-search archives of the Ubuntu
forums are a big plus point /there/ - but this (i.e. your reply) is very
encouraging (along with Federico's replies).  IOW if *nobody* on CLUG
(probably not a very big sample of Linux users, but probably a very
clued-up sample) was using it, I don't think I'd go further.

I'm now downloading some ISOs.  Ideally I will be able to do what I've
been doing with Ubuntu ISOs - extract the kernel and initrd to disk,
to provide a boot environment which then mounts the ISO from a USB
stick from the rest.  I don't trust my CD burner these days...