Arch Linux

Arch Linux is a Linux distribution founded by Judd Vinet that emphasizes simplicity. Judd was inspired by another linux distribution called Crux Linux. Arch has not yet reached the 1.0 stability milestone but has a growing number of loyal users.

Philosophy

Arch Linux was designed to be the perfect base operating system for advanced users. Its no frills, no config tools philosophy is similar to Slackware in that it requires a certain level of knowledge to set up, but is easy to maintain. The rest of Arch Linux's philosophy is based on 3 points:

Keep it simple, keep it lightweight. Follow the KISS principle.
Relying on GUIs to build/use your system is just going to hurt a user in the end. At some point in time a user will need to know all that some GUIs hide.
Arch allows the user to make all the contributions they want to as long it does not go against the ideals of the design or philosophy.
Package Management

Arch is primarily based on binary packages. These packages are managed with the Pacman tool, which handles package installations, upgrades, removal and database queries. Binary packages for Arch Linux are built optimized for i686 microprocessors, which makes it fast on modern hardware. Packages can also be built from source using the Ports-like ABS (Arch Linux Build System). This system makes it very easy to build custom packages that integrate into the system.

The packages for Arch Linux come from the Arch Linux package tree and its mirrors. Currently there are 4 different branches.

Current - Contains all the packages needed to set up a base linux system.
Extra - Contains packages that are not required for a base system and add extra functionaltiy.
Unstable - Contains packages that are unstable and being tested before being put into current or extra.
Testing - Contains packages that are deemed stable but are still pending bug reports.

Unofficial repositories exist with packages that are integrated into the official tree.