Arch linux anyone? Distro choices blah blah.

[dom at latter.org]

Anyone using Arch?

I've been using Ubuntu for a few years [0] but I've just tried using the live version
of 9.10 and if I boot the laptop with the big external display attached, I get an
utterly unusable flickering console.

FWIW I've installed Ubuntu 9.10 on the "kitchen radio" [1] laptop which is just
about minimum spec and it works reasonably well.  I've switched from Gnome to LXDE
on that machine to conserve RAM.  Only weirdness was that it would not install properly
if I made my /boot partition an ext2 filesystem.  Worked fine with ext4.

So I'm thinking of dumping Ubuntu - I've been waiting for it because the 9.04 kernel
has a bug in the intel video driver that makes video performance suck the big one...
and it appears it's still buggy.

Besides, the requirements of Ubuntu do creep up and the laptop's not getting any
faster.  So I'm currently looking at Arch and Frugalware, both of which claim
to be lightweight and for the experienced Linux user.

Anyone used either of these?

[0] Mandrake before that; and before that on the work fileserver, SuSE, and before
that I think it was Red Hat on a 486SX/33...
[1] Main job is, indeed, living in the kitchen and providing me with Radio 4.