yet another abf distro rave (Arch and FaunOS)

Well...as much as I liked mint it was just too damn slow to do anything. If you haven't noticed yet that is my #1 complaint about all Ubuntu (and ubuntu-based) distros. Ubuntu is just too damn slow! So that said I went in search of speed, but not quite for gentoo b/c i don't nearly have enough time to install gentoo. Hell, I hardly have time to sleep!

That said, lets start out with Faun b/c i am going to keep it short and sweet. FaunOS is a LIVECD. That is, think: Faun is to Arch, what Knoppix is to Debian. That is, as a livecd it is absolutely awesome, however as far as hdd installation is concerned, dont do it! In LiveCD mode you have 3 boot options: traditional, failsafe, and to ram. The last option requires 1.5gb of ram and takes about 2 minutes to complete but the entire os is basically loaded to ram so once your desktop shows up you are flying fast. The traditional livecd more is plenty fast too. It comes with 2 instsallers, a Faun installer and an Arch installer. I've tried both. The Faun installer basically copies the livecd to your hard drive. With the Faun installer you get what essentially is an "unbreakable linux", that upon reboot everything gets reset to the default configuration, even installed packages. Of course in this mode it is useless as a desktop OS since you are unable to really save / change / tweak anything. In the Arch installer mode it basically acts as a method of installing Arch linux, however it is still in reasonably early stages of development...so it doesn't work. If you want to install Arch, install Arch!

(the part about actual Arch is coming at around 10:30pm central tonight... i gotta go to work right now. what did i tell you about having no time?)

Part 2: Arch Linux

There are a few simple things about Arch which I think makes it the most if not practical, at least effective linux solution for desktop use. For starters most packages (at least the ones in the repos) are very recent and kept up to date very well. Despite often having the most recent packages of just about any other distro it is still very very stable. Though also b/c it is so very recent it might not be well suited for server use due to stability concerns. Notice that in Arch release versions don't matter since all up to date systems are in "current" (or "unstable" if you like to live on the edge)... the only thing that "releases" mean is how updated the installation media is. On that note the latest release "Don't Panic" has a bad flaw on the ISO... the included kernel is 2.6.22 while the kernel headers provided are 2.6.21 so if you need to build your network drivers from source (so that you can use Pacman to get other programs) you are screwed b/c headers are no good.

Another great thing about arch is that it is i686 and really tuned for speed. Although many packages are configured to support a lot of other things so they are chunkier than say in Gentoo when you use USE flags properly, yet as far as binary distros go Arch is easily faster than Mandriva / PCLOS2007 (notice that both are reasonably fast themselves, especially very quick boot time), and even gives speed-tuned distros like Vector a good run for their money. Compared to ubuntu there is quite literally a night and day difference in performance.
Yet another benefit of arch is no "one size fits all" distribution. There is a "base install" and a "full iso" disks. The base disk is 120odd megs and includes the core system... basically just enough so you can boot, get online, and install everything else via pacman (recommended way). the "full" iso is still base install but other packages (xorg, media stuff, etc) are also on the cd so you can install them from disk...but then you are gonna have to update via pacman anyway. So much like in Gentoo (or Debian netinstall would be closer i guess) you get a custom system that has everything you want and nothing you don't.
Speaking of pacman...not the game with little yellow dot eating other dots, but Arch's package manager. it is very advanced and really fast and effective. It is command line based and works much like Debian's APT, there are several GUIs available.
The forums and IRC channel are fairly active and helpful (not quite ubuntu-style due to lower population but still pretty nice)... wiki is fairly complete (not as complete as Gentoo Wiki though)..but there are some errors on some pages which a more experienced person will catch but a novice would be left with a broken system.

Brief Comparison to Ubuntu:
(+) = Better (-) = Worse than ubuntu.
+ Faster Performance
= About same boot time (depending on config/ hardware of course)
- slower reply for support via Forums/IRC
+ Better Wiki
+ Completely custom built
- Way longer to install
- Slightly slower mirrors
- AUR (community repo) is very outdated
+ More recent packages
- Less complete collection of software via repos

NOTE: Not for complete linux n00bs. Previous experience is required, actually understanding whats going on and how linux works is highly recommended. Though its still an easier and faster install than Gentoo...so if you do screw up doesn't take as long to get back to where you started.

yet another ...not exactly a bug...but concern that i have in regard to Arch is that although firefox is 2.0.0.6 it is still called Bon Echo for some odd reason. Also uses the generic "world" icon rather than the fox...