Anyone using Arch? I've been playing with it for a week now, and I have to say that after trying many other distros, this one is a winner for me. I got tired of bloated distros and I don't like wasting time on complex installations and configurations, and oh yeah, I needed good package management. APT was great, but it's also let me down alot. So far, nothing has broken during package management in Arch. I really enjoyed gentoo, but for someone that has to be productive most of the time, I wouldn't recommend it. Installation is not for the newbie and package management (in spite of how cool it may look) is not for the impatient. So for anyone that desires:

-quick base installation
-a quick booting system
-excellent package management
-latest KDE
-kernel 2.6

I would suggest giving arch a try. For the newbie, it may take a few installs to get it right, but once you get there, you'll have a great running system. So before this turns into a "my distro is better" thread, let me just say that I'm not trying to "threaten" anyone's favorite distro; I'm just sharing my two cents in an effort to build a better linux community, regardless of what distro you're running.

Got .5 installed on a 500MB hard disk.

Not a bad distro I might add...I really liked the upgradeability aka package management. However, if I hadn't been a slackhead from way back...I might have been a bit put off at the beginning do to lack of direction. However, the forums and man pages worked great. Like I said though, if I were used to something like Windows, I'd have been put off bigtime.

Something I've been harping on for about a month now for newbies is MEPIS Linux. It's like knoppix...so it is put over the top of debian and uses the apt package management system and it is a LIVE CD. However, the option to hard disk install is better than in knoppix and the thing that got me with it is the hardware detectablility. I m ean, it detected my CDRW USB...something NO linux distro has ever done, including knoppix.

So add those two cents to yours and we get four. There is our four cents. Two really great Distros that are up and coming. Arch Linux and MEPIS Linux.

I really liked Mepis. I think it's one of the better Debian-based distros next to Knoppix. I liked Knoppix, but it wouldn't boot on my laptop. In fact, I couldn't boot any live cd that was "knoppix-based". I know a lot of people have experienced that problem also. But that's not just Knoppix, there are other live-cd distros that I can't boot either.

I agree with you on Mepis hardware detection. It definitely does a great job at it. IMO, if you want debian, go with something debian-based, such as Mepis or Knoppix (if you can boot it).

I ran RH for a long time and in spite of how much I hated how bloated it was, I got APT, added some new apt sources, and stuck with it because it was what I had grown accustomed to. RH would install things in spite of what you deselected during the installation wizard. After every install, I'd spend large amounts of time stripping out services and apps I didn't want. I had to "open" my mind to other distros, and realize that they weren't evil; they were just different. And thankfully I did. I've booted just about every distro that this laptop could possibly boot and it's been a fun learning experience.

If I wasn't running Arch, I'd be running Mepis.

Dats why I run em both ;p