Hi gang,

Another profoundly metaphysical conundrum comes to mind..

If you had to recommend a stable yet fairly 'bare bones' distro to an intermediate computer user so that he/she could take it and build upon, add to, enhance and what-have-you to something lean and customised AND during the creation of which the process would be highly instructive yet not prove insurmountably time-consuming and frustrating, which distro would you suggest? I'm thinking in terms of something like a very much dumbed-down version of Linux from Scratch, perhaps.

What would make for the best auto-didactic Linux distro for a non-supernerd to mess around with?

Thanks,

CC

Let me just sum up the rest of this thread now:

65% of repliers will suggest Slackware
20% of repliers will suggest Gentoo
10% of repliers will suggest Arch
04% of repliers will suggest LFS
01% of repliers will suggest any

LOL, good one carbonfiber!

Let me answer your question with a (two-part) question: Which Linux distribution are you using now, and do you feel you have exhausted all learning opportunities within your current distro of choice?

meh. Depends on the persons end goal.

Looking to learn Linux for job promotion/new hire/etc. I'd suggest Red Hat(CentOS)
Wanting to do video editing/photo editing/etc Fedora maybe.. Not sure. I don't do a lot of either.
Wanting to learn the purest Linux just because. Then Slackware.
Wanting to learn Linux but wants it to be as close to MS. Ubuntu or any of the other "hold your hands" Linux.

Who me? Just because I'm an intermediate computer user and a non-nerd doesn't mean I can't ask a question for or about a person who seems a bit similar to me on the face of it.

Yes, the question was meant for you, and no offense meant. What I'm getting at is, I could answer your question better if I knew which distribution you're using now and what you don't like about it. It is hard to give a recommendation to you when I know nothing about your experience, preferences, and goals.

Since you get, or can get, more or less all the same software for all of them - I'd say any distro. Coreutils are coreutils, grep is grep, bash is bash, and so on.

I agree.

If you want to really know how Linux works consider Arch , Gentoo, and LFS.

Seriously, this isn't about me. I keep a few key distros I get on with and simply cannot fault. It took a while to find 'em, but they're out there now.
My question relates to competent and computer literate Linux noobs who might be inquisitive about how Linux works on a deeper level and want to take a peek under the hood then build a custom distro (or re-author an existing one) from the kernel up simply for the purposes of "learning-by-doing." That's all.

PCLinuxOS, for example, will re-author a custom version of itself for the user just by clicking a few choices and hitting "build" as it were. But this teaches the user nothing; the process is entirely opaque and everything's done for you. It's at the other end of the extreme from LFS. I simply ask for a suggestion somewhere between the two; educative without tearing your hair out. :-)

Aha, I understand the question now. For a hypothetical imaginary faceless Linux noob about whom I knew nothing, and to whom I could not ask questions to assess his/her skills and preferences... I would recommend a user-friendly "starter" distro like Ubuntu. If said user desired a "from scratch" experience, the Ubuntu Minimal CD (netinstall) would be perfect. The reason I suggest Ubuntu is due to the beginner-tolerant culture that surrounds it, rather than any inherent features of Ubuntu itself (I believe all distros are equally "educational" under the hood).

...

I'm with the 65%

BrianL makes a good point, they all have access to the cmd line and even the src.