[arch] Suggestions as Arch approaches 1.0

[hollywoodb]

As a longtime Slackware & Gentoo user, here are a few things I would
like to see in future Arch releases....

Note that I am fairly new to Arch Linux, but I feel these suggestions
would be important in any distrobution

1) Stonger conformancy to FHS....
I think it is important in maintaining consitency & compatibility to
conform more closely to FHS. For example, installing apps (gnome,
firefox) to /opt is probably not the best approach.  While I assume
that these packages are built this way to serve a purpose, am I wrong
in assuming that configure --prefix should be set to /usr or at best
/usr/local?

2) A more unified metapackage system....
While using Gnome I find a large portion of what Gnome is capable of
is not installed by a simple pacman -S gnome.... perhaps metapackages
could be introduced to cover standard gnome apps such as the gconf
editor, screensaver control panel, etc etc... A 'slim' Gnome install
is convenient, but a 'full' Gnome install is equally (if not more)
convenient, especially for newish users.  Another somewhat-related
example is that installing the gnome-system-monitor does not install
the corresponding panel applet.

3) A more standardized initscripts approach....
The rc.conf 'daemons' setup is easy to use, but not familiar... if
Arch is to use the /etc/rc.d/ format, perhaps the standard approach of
chmod [+/-]x /etc/rc.d/rc.somescript would be just as simple and more
easily recognizable.

4) This isn't a suggestion, just an issue I'm experiencing....
Firefox will often leave behind running firefox-bin processes and
such... I am often left unable to launch firefox untill I killall -9
firefox-bin (or similar)... I've compiled firefox from source
(--prefix=/usr) and used the gtk2+xft installer. I haven't experienced
this issue with either method.

I am not writing this to criticize the Arch devs... overall I find
Arch to be a very nice distro with a quite refined package system. I
have experienced issues with gcc 3.4.x (libstdc++) & binary
compatility (which isn't terribly difficult to work around), but the
binaries in question were compiled with gcc 2.95 or earlier.  As this
is my first foray into gcc 3.4.x, I was expecting some quirks.  I
installed Arch using the 0.7beta1 iso.

I suspect I will be tinkering with Arch for quite some time, as I very
much like the overall 'feel' of it... A job well done, and besides the
few quirks that I am still getting used to I am finding many of the
features I was looking for right here.

Cheers,
Wade