> how's the install experience these days ? The install experience is still entirely manual. However, the hardest part is deciding on the more contentious comp

> how's the install experience these days ? The install experience is still entirely manual. However, the hardest part is deciding on the more contentious components, such as the choice of filesystem(s), partition scheme, and bootloader. The actual install process is simply following the install guide, typing commands, and occasionally delving into the wiki to learn how to configure the more esoteric components, should you choose to use them. Granted, this is far above what most normal people can or want to do, and that's fine. Other distros exist, with real installers, and they make mostly-sane choices for you. > is there something cool that you get from Arch ? - A system completely customized to your software tastes. You can do this with Fedora and Ubuntu after the fact, but you're not building those systems from the ground up. - Unadulterated software. Arch keeps downstream patching to an absolute minimum. I'm running Gnome, not Gnome patched hundreds of times over to work with hundreds of external dependencies. - A huge and well-maintained repository of unofficial software packages. Again, you get this with the popular distros, but Arch has a very decent canonical experience compared to them. I personally did not like dealing with PPAs to get user-packaged software on Ubuntu, for example. - Current software. I run mainline kernels and the latest open-source graphics drivers with what I consider to be a reasonable testing buffer. What I consider reasonable is most likely not what others consider reasonable.