Repost: Arch linux anyone? Distro choices blah blah.

[Huw]

Hi Dom

(In fact, hi everyone - long time lurker, first time poster here)

I, too, have been having problems with Ubuntu 9.10 which seemingly nobody is able to help me with so I am also going to dump it.  A pity; I joined the Ubuntu community at 6.06 and have been blissfully happy with it until now.

Arch is one of the systems I've been looking at recently, along with Debian, Gentoo and FreeBSD (!).  I used Arch quite a way back now...well, it would have been before settling on Ubuntu 6.06 so early 2006 at the latest, and no doubt it's changed since then.

However, going from what I recall, I think it was/is an excellent distro.  It is remarkably lightweight; you literally install only what you need.  The standard install, at least when I tried it, put a tiny base system on your PC and you had to specify which kernel modules you needed, etc.  I gather it's slightly more automated today.  Oh, and it's based on System V too.

One of the most pertinent points I could make is that if I could get it working three or so years ago, anyone can!  I'm certainly no guru.  One other nice thing I can say about Arch is that it's based on rolling release, so no waiting around for six months for new packages.  The package installer, pacman, is also very good as I recall.

I'd be most interested to read your impressions if you go ahead.

Huw