Hello. I am considering drifting away from Ubuntu and Canonical for the reasons that I would like a simpler, faster, more technically transparent, Linux distribution. Among other reasons for me to change, it seems Ubuntu heavily modifies the Linux kernel which makes it harder to configure, as some vanilla Linux instructions don't apply. I am also concerned with the fact that *buntu is commercially sponsored and operated and would like to move on to a more community driven distro with no commercial or corporation attachments.

Thus, I have come to the conclusion Arch Linux shares my perspective.

I'm a bit uncomfortable in a command-line interface environment, and have little knowledge of really what happens "under the hood" as I operate the Ubuntu distribution. However, after much searching on Google and having a very comprehensive look at Arches' wiki, forums and documentation, I feel as though I will be able to install and configure it with some patience and reading.

There is really only one last deterrent from me trying Arch, and that is I MUST (heavy personal preference ) have Google Chrome as my Internet browser. Google has only released .deb and .rpm packages for use on systems with that package-management. Now correct me if I am wrong, but Arch uses the pacman package manager that installs pkg.tar.gz packages only.

How do I utilize .debs or .rpms (specifically said package) for use on Arch Linux?

If you don't know the difference between debs & rpms and what distros use them, and, if you don't like the command line, you will not be successful running Arch.
Then again, I really didn't really learn anything until I went from Mepis to Debian Sid and had to fix everything that broke in Sid. If you have patience and are willing to read you might, in time, be successful running Arch.
BTW. If something is unavailable for Arch, Archers will compile it from source. I don't know if this is the case with Chrome, it might be available in their repos. Did you check out their manifest?

Try to convert deb or rpm to pkg with alien.

You can get the Chromium package for Arch here: http://code.google.com/p/chromium/wi...romiumPackages

You could also get an rpm and unpack it using rpm2cpio to get the tarball.

I want Google Chrome, not Chromium. Google Chrome is based on Chromium, like Ubuntu is based on Debian. But Chromium is not the full-featured browser that Google Chrome is.

Before proceeding onward, will the unpacking of the .rpm with rpm2cpio cause any issues? Will it act like a package, or is it like compiling from source, with ./configure && make?

Thanks for the info.