Well, Arch isn't that hard.
They have a nice wiki and you can set this up in 2 hours.
its pretty straight forwarded.
Get your Internet as first.
Since thats really important. But are you sure you want to run Gnome? I mean, you have only seen Gnome Right? (As I saw you used Ubuntu) so you might want to take a look at KDE. Or the more exotic: OpenBox, XFCE, ion, Ratpoison, Enlightment, Fluxbox, IceWM or any other?
Well, good luck.
Small advice.
Get rid of the Beer and the Cigarettes.. you'd better start making Coffee..
