Tighter repos and faster update cycles? More minimalist? I really don't know between arch and slack. But, Arch, imo is much easier than gentoo to maintain and control (there's also less impulses to just tinker for hours rather than getting work done) I think that it will be the ultimate winner - 20 minutes for a complete upgrade of the system (after a 3 week gap mind you) It is complex, without the complications.

...and you don't have to leave it overnight to compile and install X ;D

Yeah, I'm not an old-school linux user, I was born in '93, but even I know those distros are recent - arch is from 2002 for crying out loud.

But, I feel that they are preserving the "old school" style, or, at least what I perceived linux to be. I used to use gentoo, until I couldn't take any more emotional trauma that arises from the dreaded "emerge -u world". Now, i'm on arch and haven't looked back. I like the extra control that is given to a linux user, but I pay the penalties of a rolling distro. (still haven't got flash working properly without it skipping through the entire video sometimes) I honestly don't think I would be using a tiling wm right now if it hadn't have been for a knoppix disk I was given in 2004. Simple distros have their places.

I miss the feeling of dread that was associated with typing "emerge --update world" after you hadn't updated for a week or so. Oh, wait, no, that's never changed.

So glad I changed to arch, I just updated after a 2 week gap, and there were no troubles. ;D

XFCE is pretty damn nice, but too heavy for my liking. I use musca on an arch base. I have no need for your pesky "buttons", "graphical shortcuts" and "icons". Tiling all the way baby!

Personally, I think that tiling window managers, whilst looking difficult initially, are more efficient and simple to use. KDE and Gnome just give me headaches now ;D

I miss dreading the days when you had forgotten to do an emerge --update world for a whole week, oh wait, that hasn't changed... Glad I swapped to arch ;D

Let me assure you, the bloat is inbred, default, ingrained and well-integrated into FF. That being said, the extension support is good. Oh, and the speed does actually have a bearing in that FF doesn't flush its cache terribly often. For windows this is fine, but on linux where a system could be up for weeks, it can get annoying closing and re-opening so many tabs. Browsing the internet almost exclusively from within a virtual machine, really eccentuates the effects of a bloated browser, particularly with the limited ram issue.
Chrome has beautiful WebKit integration, and suffers none of the shortfalls of Midori :D

Look, apart from the fact that it was a little too heavy on my ram (FAR less than FF btw) Opera was ok, BUT i thought it was unfortunate that they filled it with superfluous crap. Like the massive toolbar on top, the animated tab switch thingo (which you could disable mind), and that annoying dialer thing. Seemed like they could have squeezed more horsepower out of getting rid of that.

Have to agree with Tumbleweed though, Opera is a decent browser, but compared to IE's default shipping, Firefox's pseudointellectual fanboy support and Chrome lurking in the shadows with its high speed appeal, it just doesn't have anything really distinct you know?

Beat me to it. Personally, I think FF is almost as bloated as IE. I think the only good, usable part of FF is the extension support. In the end, Chrome beats them all in speed _and_ speed, yet we only ever hear about how FF just managed to beat IE or the other way around.

REAL MEN USE WEBKIT DAMMIT!! =P

On this subject, does MS use Linux at redmond to compile windows distros? I can't imagine so many smart(ish) people that would keep themselves deliberately isolated from an OS so well optimised to create stuff, not just to use stuff. If so, it would explain some of the similarities between Windows and some of the Linux distros ideas (although i suppose they could have just been doing research)

Yeah, why was that modded as a troll? OP's comment is a perfect criticism to pick out from an ignorant media company. Maybe humourless mod missed sarcasm?

...Don't feed the troll. Does it not worry you that there are 2 unpatched and documented vulnerabilities? At least the linux team didn't know about this vulnerability. Besides, only a small percentage of the user base actually know exactly what everything in the kernel does, let alone pick vulnerabilities in it. In a working distro, there should be NO documented vulnerabilities without a patch. In any case, when the Linux team got tipped off, the patch was fixed. For that, I am proud to belong to such a community.

This sounds like heavy metals poisoning. If it isn't the lead paint that probably in the walls, it might have something to do with the toxic state of Lake Ontario, or more specifically the industries nearby. Why don't they try investigating that, instead of bothering me with false declarations of how the confusing, but evil, technology is harming our defenseless kids.

I use musca, its an extremely lightweight tiling window manager. No fancy taskbar (unless you install one) and uses a single configuration file that you can write yourself in about 5 minutes. background is easy to do, and the musca wiki is amazingly well done. If you want screenshots, then I can provide. Everything is controlled through a modified dmenu and keyboard shortcuts. In short, it is similar to ratpoison, but, it is lighter (like it matters) and it does not guess tiling arrangements. If you're interested in getting a little more seriously into linux, and you're sick of fancy, bloated desktop environments, give this a try.