I am also using Arch for several years now. I've tried a lot of distros, but everytime I get back to Arch mostly because of its wonderful repos.
AUR is brilliant, and I love having every package up to date.
The distro is simple, and everything works like you want because you designed your own system.

On Monday, 20 January 2014 at 15:43:59 UTC, Chris wrote:
> Okidoke. I'll try to install it today in UEFI mode and see what happens.

Manjaro is great but keep in mind that you will not have access to ArchLinux official repositories. Manjaro's ones are a little bit slower to spread the latest packages, they don't really have the same policy.

I have installed Arch with UEFI on my laptop with the bootmanager rEFInd because I needed a dual boot. This is fairly simple, but if you only need to have one distro on your computer, I recommend you to boot using linux's UEFI bootstub, which is blazing fast.

On Tuesday, 21 January 2014 at 09:28:48 UTC, Théo Bueno wrote:
> I am also using Arch for several years now. I've tried a lot of distros, but everytime I get back to Arch mostly because of its wonderful repos.
> AUR is brilliant, and I love having every package up to date.
> The distro is simple, and everything works like you want because you designed your own system.
>
> On Monday, 20 January 2014 at 15:43:59 UTC, Chris wrote:
>> Okidoke. I'll try to install it today in UEFI mode and see what happens.
>
> Manjaro is great but keep in mind that you will not have access to ArchLinux official repositories. Manjaro's ones are a little bit slower to spread the latest packages, they don't really have the same policy.

But using pacman should give me the official ArchLinux repos. I installed some packages with pacman and it seems that it accessed the ArchLinux repo.

> I have installed Arch with UEFI on my laptop with the bootmanager rEFInd because I needed a dual boot. This is fairly simple, but if you only need to have one distro on your computer, I recommend you to boot using linux's UEFI bootstub, which is blazing fast.

UEFI installation failed or "didn't happen" with Manjaro. I installed it, got the message that everything was fine, and then on reboot I was shown "Ubuntu" as an option that did not and could not work, because it had been erased from disk. I installed in legacy mode and it worked. In fairness, Manjaro says that the test installer (with UEFI support) might not work. After the installation everything worked well (wifi, sound etc.). Ubuntu on the other hand did not, I had to download Xubuntu desktop to get a UI, and then edit a file that is "no longer needed" (but apparently is!). Then Unity worked too. Still, Ubuntu would always have some issue (wifi would break down, sound would not work, something new every effin day). So I decided to give it the boot, and for other reasons too: I don't like the Ubuntu approach anymore. I was beginning to feel Microsoftened or (ver)Appled.

On Monday, 20 January 2014 at 12:30:27 UTC, Chris wrote:
> At work we use Ubuntu, however, I'm not at all happy with it and don't want to use it on my private computer. Which is the best alternative (I've been looking at OpenSUSE; Mint is based on Ubuntu/Debian but only shares the repository with Ubuntu (right?); Fedora has bad reviews at the moment and might be a pain to set up (drivers etc.)). I'm also considering FreeBSD, a completely different beast.

As many others here, I've also been using Arch for a couple of years.
It's a really great distro, and I don't think the "Expert user" label is correct (I'm no expert user), although I've used Debian distros on and off (mostly off) since 2001.

The only expert level I've encountered has been the installation procedure, but I simply just followed the instructions step-by-step. I've done this for 3 computers.

1) The repository is filled with all the software I need (be sure to use yaourt or some other package manager that has access to AUR)

2) The rolling release pretty much just work. The last time it was a hassle was september 2013 - but the arch news gives a head up on these issues, and the forum is very responsive to newbies.

3) It's as lightweight as you need. My setup use 84MB RAM after booting and 110MB after launching X (I use i3wm and no desktop).

4) The documentation (Arch wiki) is an amazing source of information. The wiki is the reason I started using Arch. Anytime I searched for something, Arch wiki (and sometimes the forum) seemed to pop up with the solution.

It's the first distro that Just Works (TM) for me, and the distro that made me go full-time GNU/Linux.
Even compiling a custom kernel, which I needs for a piece of hardware, is just a couple of commands.

I haven't tried much of the graphical tools though, so you might have to be comfortable with the terminal for all I know.

On Monday, 20 January 2014 at 12:30:27 UTC, Chris wrote:
> At work we use Ubuntu, however, I'm not at all happy with it and don't want to use it on my private computer. Which is the best alternative (I've been looking at OpenSUSE; Mint is based on Ubuntu/Debian but only shares the repository with Ubuntu (right?); Fedora has bad reviews at the moment and might be a pain to set up (drivers etc.)). I'm also considering FreeBSD, a completely different beast.

FreeBSD with E17 is the best desktop I've ever used, very fast and responsive.  You can quickly run or install PC-BSD to see if it will go well with your hardware, then reinstall to FreeBSD if you like it but don't want or need all the PC-BSD extras.  The FreeBSD packaging system works very well.

Arch is the one linux distro that reminds me of FreeBSD, particularly pacman and the AUR, which is why it is the only one I install these days.

On Tuesday, 21 January 2014 at 11:18:05 UTC, Joakim wrote:
> On Monday, 20 January 2014 at 12:30:27 UTC, Chris wrote:
>> At work we use Ubuntu, however, I'm not at all happy with it and don't want to use it on my private computer. Which is the best alternative (I've been looking at OpenSUSE; Mint is based on Ubuntu/Debian but only shares the repository with Ubuntu (right?); Fedora has bad reviews at the moment and might be a pain to set up (drivers etc.)). I'm also considering FreeBSD, a completely different beast.
>
> FreeBSD with E17 is the best desktop I've ever used, very fast and responsive.  You can quickly run or install PC-BSD to see if it will go well with your hardware, then reinstall to FreeBSD if you like it but don't want or need all the PC-BSD extras.  The FreeBSD packaging system works very well.
>
> Arch is the one linux distro that reminds me of FreeBSD, particularly pacman and the AUR, which is why it is the only one I install these days.

How's the FreeBSD documentation / community? Is it easy to find solutions? ArchLinux is really good (from the little I've seen so far) and not as chaotic as "askubuntu".

On 21 January 2014 11:42, Chris <wendlec@tcd.ie> wrote:
> On Tuesday, 21 January 2014 at 11:18:05 UTC, Joakim wrote:
>>
>> On Monday, 20 January 2014 at 12:30:27 UTC, Chris wrote:
>>>
>>> At work we use Ubuntu, however, I'm not at all happy with it and don't
>>> want to use it on my private computer. Which is the best alternative (I've
>>> been looking at OpenSUSE; Mint is based on Ubuntu/Debian but only shares the
>>> repository with Ubuntu (right?); Fedora has bad reviews at the moment and
>>> might be a pain to set up (drivers etc.)). I'm also considering FreeBSD, a
>>> completely different beast.
>>
>>
>> FreeBSD with E17 is the best desktop I've ever used, very fast and responsive.  You can quickly run or install PC-BSD to see if it will go well with your hardware, then reinstall to FreeBSD if you like it but don't want or need all the PC-BSD extras.  The FreeBSD packaging system works very well.
>>
>> Arch is the one linux distro that reminds me of FreeBSD, particularly pacman and the AUR, which is why it is the only one I install these days.
>
>
> How's the FreeBSD documentation / community? Is it easy to find solutions? ArchLinux is really good (from the little I've seen so far) and not as chaotic as "askubuntu".

Being a ubuntuforum guy (and a previous member of staff there) - I've
never liked askubuntu either.

On Tuesday, 21 January 2014 at 12:04:56 UTC, Iain Buclaw wrote:
>> How's the FreeBSD documentation / community? Is it easy to find solutions?
>> ArchLinux is really good (from the little I've seen so far) and not as
>> chaotic as "askubuntu".
>
> Being a ubuntuforum guy (and a previous member of staff there) - I've
> never liked askubuntu either.

Yes, it's quite chaotic, this whole idea of crowdsourcing went wrong there.

>
> How's the FreeBSD documentation / community? Is it easy to find solutions?

I'm a long time FreeBSD user. I've always found the documentation quality outstanding. Never had any difficulty to find answers or solutions. Besides FreeBSD has a web forum and mailing list with lots of helpfull people attending.

I'm also using OpenSUSE since 10.0 days. And debian on and off since the 4.0 days.

I use D (self build from github sources) on FreeBSD OpenSUSE and windows. (On windows sometimes also the prebuid binaries.)

As DE I prefer KDE.

On Tuesday, 21 January 2014 at 13:42:11 UTC, Arjan wrote:
>>
>> How's the FreeBSD documentation / community? Is it easy to find solutions?
>
> I'm a long time FreeBSD user. I've always found the documentation quality outstanding. Never had any difficulty to find answers or solutions. Besides FreeBSD has a web forum and mailing list with lots of helpfull people attending.
>
> I'm also using OpenSUSE since 10.0 days. And debian on and off since the 4.0 days.
>
> I use D (self build from github sources) on FreeBSD OpenSUSE and windows. (On windows sometimes also the prebuid binaries.)
>
> As DE I prefer KDE.

I'm testing ArchLinux now and so far I think it's great. I've encountered less problems than on other, so called user-friendly, distros. The documentation is sound, and I like the fact that it's a rolling distro. If it comes so close to FreeBSD, as has been said, I wonder if it is worth the trouble to install FreeBSD at all.

Am Tue, 21 Jan 2014 08:52:40 +0000
schrieb "Dicebot" <public@dicebot.lv>:

> On Tuesday, 21 January 2014 at 03:50:28 UTC, Marco Leise wrote:
> > Not that there is any competition going on...
> 
> Well, I won't reject this possibility :P
> 
> Your Gentoo approach is very solid though and I don't think it is possible to do anything like that right now for any binary package distro - most of D code is source-compatible between compilers but almost never ABI-compatible. It is one of cases where Gentoo philosophy really shines.
> 
> Good job ;)

Thanks, that felt good on a cold day. :)

-- 
Marco