It's pretty stupid, but the only problem I have with using something like Arch on my desktop is I can never seem to get the fonts to look nice (ie. like they do in OS X or Ubuntu) when I've installed/configured Xorg myself.
If you use Archlinux, make sure you use the wiki and bbs to their full power. Most of the problems you think of have been solved in a way or another. It usually just requires installing some packages, which is a breeze.
Fonts needs some setups indeed before to get something good.
Personally speaking, since I am so xterm oriented, the best thing I did was install the bitmap font Tamsyn, which I just adore. Easy to read and use. It is available from AUR, but I just download it to a directory in my home folder and use xset to add it to my fontpath.
(And Arch's wiki has an incredible wealth of information. It is one of my favorite online resources, along with OpenBSD's FAQ.)