[lnteveryday]

A note about Arch: most WMs and DEs have support for packages that allow configuration through a GUI, although the installation is all text. Configuration through editing text can sometimes be faster when you really know your system. As the author points out, running arch can really help you to get to know your system.

Also, it's been awhile since I was "new" to linux, but arch installation can be very easy if you follow the beginners guide on the arch wiki. Everything is spelled out plain and simple.

There is a graphical installer for a branch off of arch, known as Archbang. It's basically a live system you can boot into (with openbox) and install from there (still text based really, but a little more friendly). (Some arch users also fear the road of a GUI installer because it would make it easier for people with little understanding of linux to run arch, but that is a flawed philosophy. Arch can be for learning too)

[tikhonj]

Installing Arch is easy as long as you don't want to do anything clever. As soon as you want to do something like setting software RAID up, it becomes much less easy :P. At least that's been my experience.

Maybe with my next laptop I'll try Arch properly, but it was too much of a pain last time I tried to install it with my current setup.

[lnteveryday]

I generally don't set up RAID on any of my machines because there really is no need. A quick google search though returns tons of stuff on the archwiki, which goes through preparation and installation/execution. This isn't only the case with RAID. As awayand said, the documentation is golden.

[awayand]

the wiki is there to guide you better than any other distros docu out there, well except maybe gentoos wiki...

[gcr]

As of last month or so, Arch threw out their installer. You now have to use the command line. Does this make it harder in your experience?

[lnteveryday]

No. I actually went through the process of installing it on a netbook about two weeks ago. First time seeing it that way. Jumped onto archwiki and gave it a quick read. I can't remember how long it took me, but couldn't have been that long.

And it certainly was not any "harder", just different than the way I'm used to. That being said, arch has some of the best documentation and user support out there.

EDIT1: a fresh install of arch usually takes me less than an hour, but it usually takes me a couple days (few hours a day) to get the system just how I like it. This is because I always change things up when I do a fresh install.

EDIT2: I think one of the things that scares people away isn't so much the text based installation, it's the fact that after the installation you pretty much have a bare system. Getting the configuration to your liking can be exhausting (especially if you've just been using a DE for your entire linux experience). When I made the switch to WMs instead of DEs it was pretty difficult to figure everything out. There are so many ways to do everything and you can mix and match everything. I hard to imagine setting up a system from nothing for a less experienced linux user, but it is definitely worth it. Just RTFM before asking questions in the forums.