[OT] Good or best Linux distro?

[simendsjo]

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.