I don’t like other distros that include lots of programs out of the box. I might need an office program, a music player, etc. But I want to choose it all myself.

I like KDE, but I also like some gnome applications, and it’s difficult to find a distro that only installs one or the other.

I find it easier to start from scratch: Give me a basic desktop environment, a terminal, and I know how to take it from there.

The rolling packages are a nice touch. As a linux gamer, any bit of free performance I can get from simply installing an update is appreciated.