1. Arch linux anyone? Distro choices blah blah.

[Daniel Cohen]

Arch Linux provides usb .img files so you can straight away install 
without any CDs. Also I would recommend the netinstall - it's slightly 
less bandwidth (because you dont download the iso with old packages then 
update to the new ones) and you feel like you waste less of the server 
bandwidth because you start with the absolute latest packages. And it's 
novel ;)

But there is a great forum too, though I don't know about the mailing 
lists. For me the wiki solves almost all of my enquiries, and then any 
problem I have are either detailed later in the article, or I pop on 
IRC, and the people there are incredibly friendly. Normally. You 
occasionally get responses like:

<faemir>how do I get subtitles in mplayer?
<mrelendig>man mplayer
<joebob> lol.

But that may be because I'm on there all the time and should stop asking 
so many noob questions... (and mrelendig is on irc 24/7 I swear, and 
responds to nearly every query in useful ways, not to knock him)

I guess the bottom line is... I find that Arch has a /better/ community 
than ubuntu. As long as you can follow step-by-step instructions it's 
not 'harder' - it just takes more setup time at the start. Hell, it 
takes less time later on because you don't get 6 monthly updates that 
can break your system. Also, because there is a small userbase, and a 
much larger percentage are very knowledgable in linux, it means you can 
access the information you want much quicker, and worst comes to worst 
you adapt some walkthrough for ubuntu for arch. Some things are even 
simpler than in ubuntu - want codec and dvd support? pacman -S codecs 
libdvdcss (okay yes codecs are now easy in ubuntu but libdvdcss still 
requires medibuntu)

Sorry for the wall of text.

> 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...
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