NyxCharon

So, after getting to know the terminal fairly well, I'm taking the plunge and setting up 3 new VM's with these "Advanced" distros. These are by no means user friendly distro's.
For those who have never heard of them:

Gentoo->Everything is complied from source. Everything. You get the best possible speed/performance since everything is fine tuned to your exact hardware and specs. Yes, that means no package manager.

Arch-> "Bleeding Edge" AKA they have the newest version of every piece of software available ASAP. Not as advanced as you might think, but you have to be able to be able to fix a broken package manager to be able to use this distro effectively. Luckily, I used to use the Debian Experimental Repo's

Slackware->Install and general usage is for the most part standard, however it's known for it's very tough security, and being EXTREMELY hard to administrate and manage.
They say if you know these distros, you know linux.

So, i was wondering if anyone had used these before and had any general tips/stories they wanted to share? Or i could be the first, since I've noticed this isn't a very linux active forum, those that do use it on here tend to cling to Ubuntu or other basic distros, which is fine, just not me.

__________________
Laptop: i3/4GB/GT610M AL 1.0 + Win7 Desktop: i5 3570/8GB/7850 AL 1.0

My sites:
Kharons Blog
Acheron Studios
Adonis Linux

Guides I've worked on:
LAMP Server Setup: Part 1, The Basics
Linux Guide

pane-free

I've tried these:

(Gentoo-based)

Sabayon
Distrowatch says iit is a Beginners Distro
-- attractive, but not "my cup of tea."


PapugLinux
-- a decent distro on i486 machines.

-----------------------------------------------------

(Slackware-based)

Zenwalk
-- very nice, but package linmitations turned me away.

Zencafe
-- much fun to surf the web with.

Absolute
-- straightforward in a Teutonic sort of way and good for old PCs.

Salix
-- my favorite Slackware-based distro with an excellent forum.


I have not tried Arch only because it was not around when I was a n00b. I am subjectively not interested in Arch so cannot comment on it.

I'll stick with Salix as top choice and the one I will continue to learn about Linux with this excellent distro. Meanwhile, antiX and Mint are my fallbacks.

NyxCharon

I'm about 2 hours into my gentoo install right now.
It has been such a long process, I'm doing it the right way and configuring everything for my exact system, including a manual configuration of my kernel, which is supposed to be "one the most advanced task a user will ever do in linux."
So, getting past that, i feel pretty good.

I'd list all of the distro's i've tried, but i'd break the character limit for one post before i got done

As far as my current distro i actually use, It's crunchbang. Intermediate level distro, great for developers, which is what i use it as-my developing OS.

__________________
Laptop: i3/4GB/GT610M AL 1.0 + Win7 Desktop: i5 3570/8GB/7850 AL 1.0

My sites:
Kharons Blog
Acheron Studios
Adonis Linux

Guides I've worked on:
LAMP Server Setup: Part 1, The Basics
Linux Guide

Dngrsone

I was used to using command-line type interfaces at work, but I wanted to learn Linux, so I took the Slackware route. So you could say I started my Linux education (more or less) with Slackware...

I learned a lot, got comfortable with the command-line; but I like GUIs, so I use Ubuntu for my regular computing use.

NyxCharon

So it's 4:30 AM, and I'm still working on gentoo. Took me 4 kernel complies to get a good one, and till 2AM to get Everything installed. Since then, I've been working on getting XFCE installed, so i have a proper WM. Which, might i add, is taking forever to compile and install.

__________________
Laptop: i3/4GB/GT610M AL 1.0 + Win7 Desktop: i5 3570/8GB/7850 AL 1.0

My sites:
Kharons Blog
Acheron Studios
Adonis Linux

Guides I've worked on:
LAMP Server Setup: Part 1, The Basics
Linux Guide

Allawi

guys if you need a good linux firewall box for your network choose one of those:

1) Smoothwall express http://www.smoothwall.org very powerful no need to know much in Linux command line

2) IpCop http://www.ipcop.org same base as smoothwall

3) ClearOS http://www.clarkconnect.com

4) Pfsense http://www.pfsense.org/ good firewall and nice interface .. contain captive portal local and radius auth .


if someone want to know how to build his own Linux firewall let me know i might help.