Arch, Gentoo, and *buntu

Hey all. As I have been recently working on setting up an Arch system on my alienware, I'd like to point all you enthusiasts to a resource that has been invaluable for me.

http://archux.com/

On the right hand side of the page, there are links to the different arch tutorials. That, and the archwiki, are detailed and helpful. Even though I'm mainly a Kubuntu guy, I find the Arch community to be very intelligent and independent compared to many other communities. I've tried a bit of Gentoo in my spare time and found it to be exciting, but difficult. The tutorials and forums tend to be less 'simple' and straightforward, which is why arch is so attractive to me.

Hopefully I'll have a fully configured system in a few days. I've spent about a week on this already.

In other GNU/Linux news, I'm really impressed with the Kubuntu 9.10 RC. Really Impressed.
On a school laptop (which takes 2+ min to cold boot to XP with all the school services enabled, ~1 min with Kubuntu 8.10) with 2 Ghz Dual Core Intel Centrino, 2 GB DDR2 ram, integrated Intel graphics, it loads in approximately 20 seconds.

"sudo shutdown -h now" will shutdown in about 5 seconds. Sadly, this is the only way to shut down as the KMenu driven shutdown will not work. It gets hung up on some process so it won't shut down.
That, and the amarok blog I mentioned before make the experience a little less pristine.
But it's by far the best *buntu release to date, faster than any Windows OS on the equivalent hardware, more stable, and less prone to malware. Firefox and OpenOffice look much better with the QT/KDE theming and firefox runs like a dream, unlike the 3.5.3 beta I was using on 8.10.

The shutdown issue as far as I can see is the only show stopper, and it's not even the official release yet. Since shutdown is so darned fast using sudo, I can really see the potential here.

Now if only ATI and nVidia would get their drivers in order. Supposedly 20-40% worldwide uses GNU/Linux, I'm surprised they haven't taken more action. But the goings on of corporations is beyond me currently, and they have done many beneficial things for the open and free software communities.
Maybe with Windows 7, they will finally see Linux as a driving force they can get behind.
It seems Redmond has gone a little overboard with the whole 'Rebooting will solve all your problems' Windows concept.
Trolling for google results provides these links:
http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7install/thread/0275d4ac-a6ca-4992-b6e5-dc128cc5f86c