karamarisan:

Q-- "Checking out what services what on, what ports were open, and doing complete audits of what I did and didn't need... I don't know of a time when I've experienced more efficient learning."

R --So it boils down to the same point I am driving above:
a) To have a secure and stable system getting into network you still have to do something more if it's not Slackware; and,
b) Accordingly it is the efficient way to LEARN saying: "Any Linux is really as configurable as you want it (and there's no reason you have to do that in icky console graphics at install-time). The stability is really not necessary for just learning how to use the damn thing"

a) I said nothing of the sort. To be really good at Linux, you have a have optimization as a hobby. In the process, you learn about everything, the stuff you turned off and the stuff you left running. A newbie can take care of all this whenever the urge strikes, or never at all, if this isn't going to be a serious use of his time.
b) You and I can run through configs and find everything we want. People who aren't experienced aren't going to know the ubiquitous from the obscure. Choice is great, but it's not useful unless it's informed choice. What I'm arguing is that going for a mainstream distro is a good call because it's a set of reasonable defaults, and once you've spent time in a system like that, you can go to something with more conservative choices that you have to override. The things that make Slack, Gentoo, etc. appealing to experienced users like us don't do much for people who don't even know their way around the filesystem yet.

I am overwhelmed by the replies & each one was really enthralling.Each one is correct from their perspective & i believe that selecting a distro is basically dictated by an individuals needs.One might be looking for GUIs,others might be looking for stability,knowledge etc .

What are my needs?

As i have mentioned in my first post I am currently pursuing my Masters in Embedded Systems, hence a couple of years down the line i might actually be designing an Embedded product or writing softwares to it.So its imperative for me to know how an Operating System coexist with the hardware.

Personally i am tired of all those graphics eyecandy & other BS which are included in M$. So i would rather prefer an OS which is oriented more towards the Hardware of a system & incidentally it even serves my needs.Hence i was looking for a distro which invloves more of a knowledge gaining process & by which one can closely observe the behaviour of a Hardware along with Software.

Having said soo , i have got tons of stuffs to read & i would like to do it through the hard way.I would like to quote a line from the movie Iron Man -- "Sometimes you gotta run before you can walk " .

ok, install any distribution and look at the kernel sources.
I'd recommend to learn some of the typical unix/linux utilities like vi (vim), egrep, sed, because they will help you to find (ok also find ;-)) your way through the system.
In linux (other than windows) everything is well documented, so learn to find a way through the documentation.

Markus

linuxnewbe3:

Markush is right, follow his lead.

Regarding your query: "Personally i am tired of all those graphics eyecandy & other BS which are included in M$. So i would rather prefer an OS which is oriented more towards the Hardware of a system & incidentally it even serves my needs.Hence i was looking for a distro which invloves more of a knowledge gaining process & by which one can closely observe the behaviour of a Hardware along with Software."

Reply: --you have read my post above.
-----------

Q --"Having said soo , i have got tons of stuffs to read & i would like to do it through the hard way.I would like to quote a line from the movie Iron Man -- "Sometimes you gotta run before you can walk " ."

REPLY:
I'd prefer Steve Tyler of Aerosmith singing:

"You've got to learn to crawl; before you learn to walk."

This was my signature way back months ago.
----------

Good luck and enjoy Linux!
Remember to check back if anything needs help....

I'm Slackware user since 2000. When newcomer asks me what distribution to choose I usually suggest Ubuntu. It's relatively easy and it's extraordinary popular. So it's easy to gain some help on the dedicated forums. Now I think the better choice for newcomers is Linux Mint. It's based on Ubuntu and uses the same repositories. In Mint newcomer has implemented multimedia codecs so multimedia applications run out of the box.

Your question is about the most challenging distribution. What is challenging for you depend on your habits. For me the most challenging were Fedora and... Ubuntu. I tried them one year ago. Here's my opinion on Fedora as I tested it in May 2008:

If you was typical Windows user the most challenging for you will be probably Debian and Slackware. As a Slackware user I recommend Slackware. Last Slackware version is 12.2. All Slackware users wait now for a version 13.0. It will be released soon. I suggest you to wait for it. Now you could start to read The Revised Slackware Book: http://www.slackbook.org/. When you'll start your adventure with Slackware you'll find very kind and helpful community here: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/.

Strangest idea I ever heard! With Linux you can select the system to run during boot procedures using LILO or GRUB. It can be the systems on different partitions on the same drive or on different drives. Vanessa, implement some boot loader in your systems and don't use that switch anymore.

***

A lot of people complain that Slackware don't use the newest applications and is old-fashioned. In my opinion all those novelties are overestimated. I install new versions of the programs because they are more stable and secure but I don't seek desperately for the new features. Usually I'm satisfied with the old features of the programs I use every day.

Since Slackware 12.2 was released a lot of patches appeared: apr, apr-util, bind, cdrtools, cups, curl, cyrus-sasl, dhcp, fetchmail, ghostscript, git, glib2, gnutls, httpd, lcms, libpng, mkinitrd, mozilla-firefox, mozilla-thunderbird, ntp, openssl, openssl-solibs, php, pidgin, ruby, samba, seamonkey, subversion, svgalib_helper, udev, wicd, xdg-utils, xine-lib, xpdf, xterm. Thanks to them it's still the stable and the secure system.

The system and the programs are tools. It's easy to install them anew. Mine, yours, and theirs data are unique. It's practically impossible to recreate them after the crash. So it's important to use stable and secure system and programs in order to preserve data.

Some people above recommended Gentoo and Linux From Scratch (LFS).

Gentoo is for those who'd like to gain the system perfectly taking advantages of the hardware resources. During Gentoo installation you compile all the components of the system. It's long-lasting process. At the end you'll gain system and programs working slightly faster on your machine. The process of Gentoo installation isn't difficult if you follow the documentation.

Linux From Scratch is for those who'd like to build theirs own Linux distribution using as a starting point any other installed distribution. Technically skilled people reading carefully documentation shouldn't have problems with the entire process of building a distribution with LFS.