I'm more enamored with Arch than you, I guess. I distro hopped until installing Arch three years ago. At first, I loaded it up with every KDE doodad I could grab from the package databases, but last year I took it upon myself to see how minimal I could get. I run a barebones Openbox, and stick to the command line and vi. After a few months of tinkering and resisting the urge to reinstall KDE, I've built up a tricked out openbox config, a sizeable set of bash scripts, and an every evolving collection of vi settings, that I don't find myself missing much. In fact, I find I'm more productive without all the eye candy. A suggestion I'd make is to force yourself to use the command line. It's scary at first, but once you get accustomed to it and bash, you'll be amazed at how much of a productivity killer the mouse is.

Other distros I've tried include Suse, Fedora, Mandrake, Mint, and Slackware, but I doubt I'll ever actively seek out another distro, considering how much work I've put into Arch to get a system that is perfectly tailored to what I want it to do. Plus, there's an undeniable thrill to opening up a command prompt and keying 'pacman -Syu'. The only downside to Arch is lack of package signing, but that is currently in the test repositories and looks like a loophole that will finally be filled.

A couple of months ago, I started playing with LFS, but that partition remains idle. I started messing around with it, but then got distracted when someone at work showed me clojure.

For me I found that on a computer that I do all those items that keep my household up and running going minimal gets frustrating. I will agree that command line is very fast, but sometimes I like a simple GUI style search to find what I want. Being able to scan what software can be downloaded and reading what it does is a great help sometimes. I am still working on command line to get comfortable to do all from it . I really like pacman, packer, and yaourt on command line. I find I like using command line to Apt-get in Debian it is very fast. Some activities I prefer some sort of a GUI. I did get Arch going up to a desktop and it was fun, and so I use Arch to learn on not as my main desktop. I like Archbang and CTKArch because they get you to the desktop, and are still minimial so you still have only what you want in it. I have several computers which I use to check out Distros and and work on learning Arch. On my main computer I don't want to be fixing all the time thats why I gave up on Windows. I spent more time fixing than getting things done.
I know that some Arch users don't like the concept of Archbang, CTKArch, and KahelOS as not not being true to the ideal of Arch. They do introduce newbies to Arch and most likely would make them more willing to try Arch. The big reason I went to these Arch distros was for the Rolling updates, and no huge Distro upgrade every year or two.

Debian stable was just to out of date for me very stable but out of date, and you had to know your repositories well to change that. Debian testing is a bit better with updated software. Arch seem easier to set up and maintain than a Debian Sid distro.

maybe if you won't mind sometime if I could ask you guestions when I get stuck working on a Arch setup. I do agree that once you get Arch setup the way you want why would want to leave it. Have you tried Gentoo?
Thanks for posting a reply to my post.

I started out quite a while back with Slackware 1.0, then moved through Red Hat 5 and 6 (a couple of my co-workers bought me a red fedora as a wedding gift). Moving to Open SuSE was an offshoot of installing Novell SuSE Enterprise Server 10 at work 6 or 7 years ago.

I've found that the network installation works pretty well, but if you don't have a good, high-speed Internet connection, then fugetaboudit. Open SuSE has an updater application that works pretty well.

I have used Open SuSe and have a very high opinion of it. I haven't tried a network install. I have some Sun Servers one being an ultra 60 that I am having a problem getting with cd rom disk drive going it maybe a simple problem but I might have to do a network install to get am OS on it. I have no experience with that. I have some older servers some Sun servers and some used computers that I am using to learn hands on networking with a home system. I am using the Sun servers to learn Solaris. I use used Computers so it keeps my hobby affordible money wise. My wife likes that.

I have installed Novel SusE Enterprise Server 10 still have the software. it, I have Centos on them now. I enjoy learning how to setup and use computers and servers sort of a hobby. I don't work in IT just enjoy learning. Thanks for the reply.

Just having some fun.

But, seriously, both do contain open source software. Windows to only a small extent (like ftp.exe) and Mac OS X quite extensively (not only the core OS and web browser, but the server tools are almost all open source).

As far as Linux, after playing with many I settled on Ubuntu for workstation and CentOS (Red Hat) for server, both in VMs on the Mac. My responsibilities at work changed, so I almost never have a daily professional reason to use Red Hat anymore (which we used mainly for Snort, an awesome open source application), but I want to keep my general Linux knowledge up to date. Red Hat isn't my favorite, thus the others.

As far as workstation, I'm a serious stickler for an elegant and fluid user interface for daily use, and I still haven't found anything close to OS X in Linux.

I've got an HP mini that came pre-installed with Ubuntu (and a solid state drive). It's "on" when I open the lid. I use it for writing in bed and sometimes surfing.

I like what they're doing with Gnome 3 but I find it awkward to move between the applications and open windows screens. I read an article about Linus Torvalds switching to Xfce

http://digitizor.com/2011/08/04/linus-torvalds-ditches-gnome-for-xfce/

I tried Xfce and have using it for a few months now. I use 4 desktops - one for web and email, another for ebooks, another for film and music collections, and the last for file and system management. It's much easier to navigate between running applications and open windows.