Ok, so i had been playing around with linux for a few years, however it had been a long time since i reverted to base. I had just changed my test pc (AMD64 CPU 3200+, 512meg Ram, 40 Gb HDU, Nvidia FX5200) to run Fedora Core 5, The OS was nice and pretty, it was easy to use and configure and i felt RC5 was basically like playing with Microsoft XP (Like SuSE 10.1 OSS), i thought... TOO BORING.
I trashed the install and and decided to try and get 'geeky', i switched to gentoo, the install was CLI based you had to perform every install task yourself. However i had complete freedom to choose the software profile and get to compile the kernel and software myself (although compiling via the gentoo emerge tool is not really manually compilation), to be frank it was a challenge that i enjoyed.
I had never actually installed, for example GRUB, manually, normally i just install SuSE or Redhat and gleefully click my mouse or move the focus in an NCURSEs gui to get the GRUB software automagically installed.
I now have a fluxbox window manager with a manually configured Xorg X windows setup, everything configured with some CLI tools and the faithfull nano text editor.
I am now a happier person, the install task involved a real sense of learning and re learning aspects of Linux, by installing the 'gentoo' way, its great way of getting back to basics and i would say to anyone starting in Linux to take this route as if you can live with Gentoo, other distros will be easier to understand as you have a behind the scenes view with your gentoo experience.
A good way of thinking about this is if linux was a comedy experience, then Gentoo is a bill hicks video rather than SuSE/Redhat being a box set of friends episodes - a dose of reality!
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