[Linux] That's It! I'm going to give Arch a shot.

Yes, I know there are a billion sites that have have distro-quest posts, but this one is about mine, and maybe you'll actually make a decision after reading it ;). Here goes...

I've been with Ubuntu for 11 months now, and I've had my ups and downs.
It was my first Linux distro, and I eventually grew a lot happier with it than I was with XP.

During that time, I gave Suse, Fedora, Zenwalk, and Gentoo a shot to impress me (on a spare partition). I'm sorry to say this, but I came screaming back to Ubuntu. Maybe it was the GNOME/KDE issue, or maybe it was the ridiculous installation processes for these distros - but none of these 'float my boat'. (I recently got Gentoo working, and it's not bad at all - but I just don't have the time to polish it up like I can Ubuntu.)

I have mixed impressions on Zenwalk - even though it is by all definitions an excellent distro, I just can't seem to get used to it. The desktop environment is definitely not as sleek as Ubuntu's, yet the boot process is a good 6 seconds faster... Netpkg (Zenwalk package manager) is sub-standard, but at least the distro isn't as bloated as Suse or (well any KDE distro).

And now, after this (admittedly small) amount of distro-hopping - I've found what looks like my dream distro. Arch Linux. Let me explain myself;

> I have an i686 computer. Whaddya' know, Arch is i686 optimized!
> No offense to the etymology, community, or meaning of Ubuntu, but Arch definitely sounds cooler.
> I have enough Linux background to compile a kernel with just a root shell and an internet conenction - so I can probably handle installing Arch ;).
> What drew me to Gentoo was the intense customization opportunities, but I like Ubuntu because it just works. Arch is a good mix between the two.
> pacman beats apt-get. you can rebuild all packages on your system (from source) if you wish with one command.
> Arch has a very strong, intelligent, and dedicated forums/community (and even 'sub'-communities. These guys love Arch so much that they have ported Arch to other architectures, and there is a special version of KDE fully optimized for Arch).
> Arch has rapidly growing repos.
> Arch forums load faster than Ubuntu's (bad reason, but still)
> Arch is not bloated

The most important reason I think Arch is great is that people are raving about it. From increased speed to usability - lots of people are checking out Arch. I even found a couple threads on distro-specific forums talking about how users are switching to Arch all of the time O_O.

I think I'm going to give Arch a shot, and stick with it. I'll post how it goes later.