Have you looked into Gentoo?
I really like having direct control over the operating system and not being subject to the whimsy of specific distro fetishes. Imagine my suprise when RH refused to play mp3's. With Gentoo, you compile ALL of your code on the computer and can optimize it for your specific hardware. It requires pretty good connectivity, I wouldn't recomend it over a modem but I'm guessing at CMU finding a speedy DHCP ain't a problem.
Bash on!