As a server administrator, needless to say I have to be familiar with the Linux platform. Linux servers are known for being secure, and if it was properly configured then you can trust that it will work without giving you a lot of hassles.

However, despite the fact that every server I work on runs Linux (typically CentOS or some flavor of BSD) none of my home or business computers do. At the office, there's a couple Linux boxes that I'm tasked with maintaining, but none of my own PC's actually run it.

In fact, my experience with Linux as a desktop computing solution has been largely negative. Most pre-configured distros these days come with a lot of extra crap that bogs down your system, especially older systems. You could run an older version of a major distro, but then you run the risk of having unpatched software vulnerable to all sorts of security risks. Even lightweight distros come with unnecessary extras or are configured all weird so if you attempt to change shit and you don't know what you're doing, you can fuck your entire system up.

This is especially a problem if you're still just trying to learn Linux and you have no idea where to start, because you start working with the pre-configured GUI, which as for anybody who knows even just a hint about Linux, is NOT what you want to become accustomed to if you plan on using Linux even only somewhat effectively.

Then I discovered Arch.