Some ten years ago, I tried an early Slackware release, just out of curiosity, but couldn't get beyond character-based consoles. So without any GUI support, I decided to take the opportunity to learn a little about the various Linux commands, try a few kernel compiles, and then forget about it - at least temporarily.
A few years later, I tried some SuSE 6 or 7 release - worked better, but couldn't run the GUI in anything but VGA. Not too impressive.
Then came the SCO case, essentially against Linux. That picqued my interest: If the (would-be) "big guys" started noticing, then it must have become pretty usable, mustn't it?
Thus, in October 2003, I installed Red Hat 9 - found it a smooth transition from Windows, nice reintroduction to Linux, quite usable indeed; but somehow, I never really found it particularly attractive (but, of course, that's a matter of strictly personal opinion).
Next, I tried SuSE 9.0, and, somewhat later on, SuSE 9.1. Nice, looked good to me, but I couldn't really find my way around YaST - it just doesn't sit well with how my brain functions, I guess... :haha: Furthermore, I kept getting the feeling that it tried to keep me from jumping too deeply in to the system - it wanted to do everything for me, while I wanted to learn more about how I could configure all these things myself.
So, I remembered Slackware, and decided to give that another try (first 9.1, these days 10.0). I just love it! Doesn't try to make up my mind for me, but lets me make my own decisions - just what I was looking for! (Well, setting up a Linux system from scratch would be another option, but I'm not too sure if I would consider that time well-spent...)
