I'm planning on getting a lot more familiar with linux. I've had plenty of ubuntu, fedora, mandriva, and others. I'm planning on installing in virtual box. What I want is essentially something that is very difficult to install and maintain. I don't care about stability or other such things. I just really want to learn the intricacies of linux through experience as opposed to being babied by a GUI.
Thanks

Go for Debian Unstable

I think you can get it net-install cd/usb

maybe gentoo
Or, bnetter yet get SourceMage;
you'll have fun with that one

Mmmm....LFS would be both difficult and a challenge to maintain:0

Thanks, I'll make sure to try those.

gentoo linux you install the whole system from source
the neatest thing about this is you get to use the -arch=native compiler option this lets the machine code use all the instructions the CPU can do

I was going to suggest ArchLinux, since I learned more using it than Debian and Slackware combined, but it isn't that difficult to install and is stable and easy to maintain. It doesn't come with a GUI by default, but getting one is as easy as installing a couple packages.

Probably Debian Unstable or Slackware, maybe an old version of Slackware, or do LFS.

I found that Gentoo taught me quite a bit about Linux. I don't know how it is now, but when it first came out, Daniel Robbins wrote superb documentation, leading one through the install.

As far as maintaining, most of them still haven't completely eliminated the command line. For example, I primarily use Fedora and CentOS, and don't use the GUI tools to maintain the system at all. Granted Fedora, Ubuntu, and most of the desktop oriented distributions make it far more difficult to figure out what they're doing, from bootup onwards.

You are aware that this is the opposite of what most people want, or say that they want? Good!

Firstly, many distros have an 'omit the GUI' install option, whether they get there by installing a GUI and then removing it, or by selectively removing the GUI from the install options. If you don't have a GUI, the GUI can't be wrapping you in cotton wool.

Secondly, have you considered one of the 'roll your own' distro options? Something like Slax www.slax.org might be your kind of thing, but there are quite a number to choose from:

http://www.rpath.com/corp/ (look at rbuilder)

(you'll hate this...the made easy part gives it away)
http://www.pcplus.co.uk/content/tuto...n-linux-distro

http://www.tuxradar.com/content/how-...n-linux-distro

http://lifehacker.com/5209814/build-...n-with-revisor

http://livedistro.org/software/build...tion-build-kit

(...and I don't really think you'll like this either, because its based on SuSE, and the site uses 'fun' graphics...but just because its based a distro that tries to wrap you in cotton wool, doesn't mean that you have to take the cotton wool in your version)
http://susestudio.com/

and this on LFS variants
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/li...lfs/index.html

Thanks a ton everyone! I've learned quite a bit tinkering around with these. I must say that Arch taught me the most at once, but the others were good teaching tools also!