Originally Posted by
SRQ Guy
I actually have used Gentoo. The first ever Linux distro I used (circa 2003, I think...) was Gentoo,
Heh, that's drinking from the firehose. I moved to Gentoo around the same time because the upgrade from RedHat 7.x to 8.0 screwed up so many things that I decided to give up on binary distributions, but I'd been using Linux since the very end of 1993, back when downloading SLS floppies was the easiest way to install.
Arch is a step back from the Gentoo level of control. It gives me almost as much control, but it's quite a bit less work from the user required to get it running and keep it running. I think it's in kind of a sweet spot that way.
I'm inclined to agree that it's a sweet spot, and it has one of the best communities around it -- I run it on a number of older systems where the overhead of keeping Gentoo up to date would be too slow, and I've .
I use Ubuntu when I set up systems for other people since it's very user-friendly.
I've tried a variety of things on giveaway laptops, and haven't had much luck converting others to Linux. Ubuntu with the newer Unity build tends to play well for Mac users, while KDE (either Kubuntu or the Fedora KDE spin) tends to be an easier transition for Windows users. The Fedora XFCE spin seems to be the best option for really old laptops.