Oh, I definitely agree that starting from nothing is a better way to reach the goal and learn a lot along the way.

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Assuming You take the route from "too little" and go up with adding "what's missing":

1. Have the Slackware installation set at hand locally by an not_formatted_on_setup_partition (mounted to /home -> /ftp/pub/Slackware/*) for most easy (and fast) reiterating of setup and/or adding Slackware packages.

2. The above can be made LAN-locally accessible by an NAS (some routers offer an USB port to plug a thumb drive into...) and a variety of network sharing protocols (NSF/SAMBA/FTP...)

3. Have the ISO media handy (flash or burned) and mount it to access it when needed.

The above are ordered by speed of access.

Learning linux is like playing with Lego for a child, you begin with very few things. You don't offer a 2000 pieces Lego box to a child, you first give him a 25 pieces box.
For linux, it's the same thing. You will be amazed what you can achieve when the resources are scarce, you'll need to be smart, you'll have to dig in. That's the better way to learn.

Thanks guys, I am using virtualbox so install/uninstall is convenient, I will start with a minimum system and then build blocks one by one to reach my favorite operation system.