I just got my DS lite and my Acekard 2i.

Now whats the best way to get this up and running? I have a bunch of ROMs waiting for me to play.Whats the best firmware and such to put on the card?

Start out with the latest AKAIO firmware.
AKAIO 1.5
http://gbatemp.net/index.php?download=7168

So I don't even need to put the official acekard 2i firmware on it?

The AKAIO firmware is better, more compatible.

Awesome. So 1.5 is the latest firmware then?And I just pretty much extract it, and put it all on my microSD card, right? Do I need to format the microSD card first or anything?

You can format if you want. And yes, just extract it, and have all the separate files/folders on the root. You can also use the official Acekard firmware loader for use of compatibility with ROMs to fall back on. http://wiki.gbatemp.net/wiki/index.php?title=AKAIO#Official_AK2_Loader