To get an idea what's Arch Linux and how well it works (if not yet tried), try "Arch Linux (AMLUG live 0.2) v0.5" which boot runs completely from CD. If its to your liking, run "hd-install" and copy the entire CD to your Hard Drive (607Mb). Hwd-1.0 (hardware detect) will detect your vga card and sound and the configuration is copied to HD thereby having a running Arch Linux 0.5 on your machine with KDE-3.1.3, KOffice-1.2, Opera-7.11 and more. With pacman (AL's package manager) download your favorite programs (pacman -S <name of package>) and keep up with the latest versions by running "pacman -Su".
AL-AMLUG live CD:
http://amlug.org/new-projects/live-c...g-live-cd.html