I just saw a DistroTube video with this question. Quite a thought provoking question [for this seasoned distroholic at least].

“What’s the hardest Linux distro you’ve tried?” can be interpreted many ways, and I wonder what kinds of answers we’ll get.

Especially these days, with much change underfoot and newer users having a different distrosphere to explore…

What’s the hardest Linux distro you’ve tried?

  • hawgietonight@lemmy.worldEnglish
    23·
    1 day ago

    No doubt the hardest was the first one. I recall it was slackware with kernel 2.x around the late 90s. Having to recompile the kernel and configure manually the scan line freq for the monitor made it challenging. Ah yes, the man pages I printed them at work, that was all I had access to. No internet.

    • hendrik@palaver.p3x.deEnglish
      11·
      1 day ago

      Still remember that as well. Though I was in school and had plenty time at my hand. Was a very rewarding experience. Not necessarily easy by any means. But it was so much more capable than any Windows 98 or ME. Didn’t crash like the latter. There was a million things to explore. Software to just install which I’d never have been able to afford as a school kid. Also way easier to customize, or read some log files and fix things once I understood how the filesystem is laid out.

      And the CRT monitor was fine. Ours just displayed an error message if the frequency was wrong. At some point I grabbed a permanent marker and wrote the mode line onto the back if the monitor. Problem solved.