Abandoned Zone

Arch Linux

Arch Linux is a lightweight and flexible linux distribution that tries to Keep It Simple. Note that 'simple' does not mean 'easy' nor 'user-friendly' in this context, but rather; 'without unnecessary additions, modifications, or complications'. In short; an elegant, minimalist approach The packages of this distribution are optimized for the i686-architecture (there's also a x86-64-version available). Keep in mind that Arch is a rolling release distro. This means there's never a reason to reinstall or perform elaborate system rebuilds to upgrade to the newest version.

Installation
Arch uses the non-gui ncurses as installer. It doesn't make any decisions by itself, it's the user who have to do al the configuring (in fact, a kind of Gentoo but with binary packages). I tried to install Arch using the Beginners Guide (http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beginners_Guide). However everything is very clear documented in this guide, I don't think that a user without any Linux experience can install this distribution without any problems.
For users, like me, with some experience the installation is piece of cake (using that Beginners guide...).
Installing the base-system took about 20mins. Installing Xorg and desktop environment took another 50 minutes.

First boot
Boot: 63s
glxgears: 119 fps

Arch recognized almost everything. My wireless networkcard was detected, but it wasn't working. Also the synaptics-driver isn't installed by default, so my touchpad was working, but not with its full capabilities.
In Arch you all have to do it yourself, no additional software is installed. Probably because this, the system is very responsive and fast. Let's try to install some software now.

The real work
Arch comes with 'Pacman'. A commandline-based package manager. It can be used to install most of the software you need, using some easy commands. Of course there also GUI-frontends available in case you prefer those. Most software I tested installed without any problems. After a while, however, I must have doing something wrong because I crippled the whole Linux-installation...
This is where this test ends...

Conclusion
Arch is a nice distribution that works a bit like Gentoo. You have to do all the configuring yourself, but with binary packages, so no slow compiling. This leads to a very fast and usable system but it is really necessary to read enough about how the configuring really works; You don't install this distribution in 123...
I gave myself not enough time for this review and ended with a broken system....