1. Arch Linux is an i686-optimized Linux distribution. It is lightweight and contains the latest stable versions of software. Packages are in .tar.gz format and are tracked by a package manager that is designed to allow easy package upgrades. Arch is designed to be streamlined while allowing for a customized configuration, with newer features such as reiserfs/ext3 and devfs. The inital version, 0.1, was released March 11, 2002. Arch 0.4 (Dragon) was released December 18, 2002. Arch Linux released Pacman 2.1 (package manager) on August 22, 2002. From LWN Distribution List