A small update on my current situation: I've successfully(?) installed arch, but I'm still setting everything up, but the internet is accessible without problems. I'm struggling with the video drivers, but that's mostly since I never had to install any on linux. I'm also learning a LOT.

At the same time I'm tempted to try out almost all distros mentioned here (even gentoo, to really get the hang of compiling and makefiles), but I'll probably try and set up Arch first, until I'm happy with it and then maybe mess around with other distros on another partition, or in a VM (but probably on another PC). Obviously armed with all the knowledge gained in the process.

Thank you all so much for your suggestions, and I hope I'll get around to trying them all one day :)

Until then, I'll continue configuring (and maybe borking) my Arch install and enjoy the discussion taking place here.

PS: The arch documentation is AMAZING.