re #Archlinux : I was tempted by this but all my currently available spare kit for experiments (including the Raspberry PIs) is 32-bit; and I read that 32-bit support is being deprecated for this distro in November, so was put off with trying it out until I acquire some better resources (unless this isn't as big an issue and there will still be support for x86?)
@vfrmedia The i686 architecture will stop being supported from archlinux.org in November. However, there will be an i686 port of the packages, like the arm ports of archlinux. Not directly provided by archlinux.org, but by third parties.