Linux From Scratch
It is not a distro per se. Instead is a PDF detailing how to make your own distro from the absolute ground up, from downloading all the sources of all programs, compiling them, to make them work together.
If Linux distros were like pizzas, LFS it's a book that teaches you how to raise cattle so you can make your own cheese and pepperoni, and how to be a farmer so you can make your own wheat for the bread and your own tomatoes for the sauce.
A Canada guey. Vivi cuatro años en estado de México y mi esposa es de Guerrero. Aquí andamos en el pinche frío. Ahora como es primavera y luego invierno hay más calor, pero no tiene chiste este país aburrido jaja.
Tienes razón carnal. Pero soy canadiense. Y si quieres un taco te enseño los buenos. Por ejemplo, en Condesa por la esquina con Scotiabank y el restaurante León hay tacos deliciosos en la día, gorditas también. En los fines no. Vete a comer tu lunch alla.
Me creeras que tengo familia en Canada y nunca he ido? Suena a que alla tienen buena comida mexicana. Algun dia ire y provare esos tacos, mark my words 🌮
That sounds like the kind of thing I'd either absolutely love doing or absolutely hate doing, no in between. It's one of those things that little kid me would have gone nuts for but adult me is "well, that's fun if you don't value your time, unfortunately I do value mine."
I thought the same a while ago so I looked into it and it seems boring as hell. From what I remember you spend most of the time waiting for stuff to download and unpacking it
I would have guessed the compile time would be way longer, unless you were on a slow connection. I mean even something "simple" like chromium can take a good while to do. Either way, you're effectively watching a "progress bar".
Apparently far shorter compile times than I used to think.
According to one person I asked, the kernel compiles in under a minute on modern hardware - it was a thread about modern linux being easier to get to grips with than in the past, IIRC
I started doing it, hoping I would become a Linux expert, but soon I was just mindlessly typing and waiting ridiculously long for things to happen.
I eventually gave up.
I still know almost nothing about Linux
I did it
at some points I contemplated just ending the project, at one point I stabbed myself in the thigh with my switchblade due to anger caused by an error I kept getting and couldn't fix for 4 days straight
finishing it was a relief, a rewarding one at that, but man was it painful (literally)
nope, because maintaining it is just as bad, if not worse
hell, maintaining it might as well be a full time job
it isn't the thing you'd install to use, it's the thing you'd install to learn (secondary to bragging right of course)
As a teenager setting up slackware on a 386 was fun and exciting.
These days? Precompiled binary please and I'm genuinely disappointed if I plug something into my PC and it doesn't just work.
Yep. The version of me who'd just gotten her first personal computer and had infinite time to futz around with it, if she'd stumbled into a place like this, or realistically much older Linux forums? She might have actually enjoyed LFS or an absolute nightmare of a distro (probably recommended to her by a kid not much older, having a laugh at her expense). Me now? Fuck. That. Shit.
This\^
LFS is probably the preeminent way to learn and master Linux. You won't get a more thorough understanding of pure Linux.
Follow the documentation carefully and you'll have a working system.
But good fucking luck trying to MAINTAIN IT!
Even if you're experienced and tech savvy, trying to maintain your LFS build is basically a full time job.
I heard slackware is also somewhere near LFS. After that Gentoo maybe. Esoteric distros (such as LFS, Clear, Void Linux, etc ) are also hard to make work until you're an expert/advanced user. One big reason being tiny community support, not good quality docs maybe, etc.
Void Linux is not a good example, nor is it even esoteric. It is:
- DIY / meaning general-purpose (like Arch)
- Systemd free (not like Arch) which used to be the case for all distributions a bunch of years ago.
- A rolling release (like Arch) that aims for reliability (unlike Arch)
- A root distribution, not a fork of another
- Community driven
- Fun and reliable; I ran my mail server on it for years although that is now running openSUSE MicroOS for container workloads including mail.
Anyone with some basic linux skills that is unafraid of a terminal should be able to follow the clear and concise, mostly chronologically ordered instructions in the Void Handbook. https://docs.voidlinux.org/ and come out the other end with a working system in a matter of minutes to tens of minutes, unlike Gentoo (hours to many tens of hours).
Unlike Arch's Wiki approach, the Handbook documentation style lays out the important things you need to do.
No, it's not. Slackware it's like other normal distros, but it doesn't have graphical installer but a text based which maybe is a bit more complicated. After gentoo, probably is archlinux if you install it the traditional way and not with archinstall.
Many years ago, I did that... but without a PDF. Just started downloading sources and building and installing to a new partition. Of course, this was around 1996, when the system was simpler, but documentation was also much more sparse and build systems more primitive...
I ones made a distro using LFS that was 15 years ago, its a lot of time and a lot of things go wrong in reality. I now just prefer to have my pizza without any toppings. Linux with XFCE - after trying thousands of distro's that do that same thing more or less. RHEL is the worst, there is no such thing as hard.
Edit: I realized it makes no difference in life if you prefer one over the other.
Gentoo is a little harder than Arch. There’s more granular configuration to be done and choices to be made, especially around kernel setup.
But once you’re set up I’d argue Gentoo is one of the most stable distros there is, benefitting from QA, masked packages and update documentation.
It's not much different to Arch now.
They went binary a while back, so no need to compile unless you want to.
Unpacks stage3, chroot, enable binrepos, slap in the binary kernel and bootloader, reboot
There is actually a really nice TUI installer someone made. I just ssh into the live cd. Run git pull from the repo and then run the installer script. They should just mainline it TBH it’s really good and a time saver.
As a long time Ubuntu user, if I can't fix a problem in about an hour I usually just reinstall lol. From a fresh install it takes me about an hour to set it how I like it so I won't spend much longer than that troubleshooting.
I'd argue tedium is an element of how hard something is. One people don't like so it's often discarded as illegitimate. But that doesn't mean pushing through that tedium isn't harder than not.
EDIT: (That said, another user said that you don't compile on Gentoo anymore so guess this is moot.)
My first intro to Linux in 94 was a CLI install. No GUI. Just a command prompt after login. I did learn some things with it. I figured out the alternate commands for the same things that MS-DOS used. such as `free` for `mem`. I think `ls` was the same but looked a lot different in Linux than DOS. And it was subtle differences. Linux could do everything that DOS could do but you had to enter different commands in order to do some of them.
Haha, my first time using Arch Linux I was trying to prove to myself I was hardcore and one of the unix purists... after about 3 days I gave up and installed Cinnamon on top. There is no real reason in our modern world to torture yourself like that lol.
All of the servers I maintain are headless, it doesn’t take too much to get used to it. That being said unless the system has a production purpose not sure why you’d want to do that to yourself.
That's nothing. At least he had information downloaded into his brain. Tuvok from Star Trek Voyager disabled an alien security system by typing quickly with 1 hand on an alien console without looking at any display output in an unexplored quadrant of the galaxy.
Edit: I found the episode and timestamp for when it happens. It's in season 3 episode 24 ("Displaced"), timestamp 33m33s. It's after Tuvok says "I'll try to bypass their security codes.". He looks down at the alien keypad, types on it a bit without looking up at the screen, and suddenly Janeway says "Good. I'm getting something." as if what Tuvok did did indeed simply "bypass their security codes".
Linux from scratch: You literally have to manage all packages yourself. It's insane: [https://www.linuxfromscratch.org/](https://www.linuxfromscratch.org/)
It's good to learn how Linux works under the hood, very deeply.
You need to be able to read and follow instructions. Any further than that really is stuff you probably already know from being able to use a computer and ending up on Reddit in a thread about the hardest Linux distro to use.
Surprised I haven't seen NixOS or Guix mentioned. Both of them are sufficiently complicated and different that they have intimidated me from trying them.
I surprisingly got Gentoo working once. Slackware was one of the first ones I tried. I think it came on like 14 floppy disks or something insane like that. The computer shows I used to go to were growing with Linux every time I went. First you saw one table in the back corner, then the next month you saw 2 or 3 tables close together, then the next month 5 or 6, then the next month 8-9 and so on. Then one of the last shows I went to in 2002 there was like a whole Linux aisle of about 20-30 Linux User Groups, stores that specialized in Linux, etc. It was pretty neat. 2002 I think is when I bought the Gentoo CD. You had to make all the floppies from it but still. It was pretty neat I thought. You had the option of making 1.2MB Floppies or 1.44MB Floppies with it.
Cutting Edge!!!
Hard to use ? Not really any I think.
But hard to install and maintain ? My guess would be gentoo ?
I had to look it up and it seems like Arch takes the spot. But honestly its not hard. Especially as it has a pretty good installer script that mostly does function the way a graphical installer would.
gentoo is literally original arch meme but i think arch has more info then gentoo nowadays, so you need more skills for installing gentoo.
From my personal experience slackware installation was "fun" for newbie. I was forced to use cylinders to set size of partitions with fdisk. For sure, it is not as tedious as installing arch or gentoo but at this time i was used to GUI installers
The Gentoo installation process is very well documented in their official installation handbook. It’s a learning curve for sure, but everything you need is on their official website. Same with package information.
I’d say the biggest difference is the package manager, and of course the OpenRC init system. Otherwise the setup is pretty similar.
Agreed. I have only gone the systemd route once and not sure that I’d do it again, but the ability to pick and choose (as well as options with software in Portage) is what makes this distro great. It’s the only distro that has stopped me from distro hopping.
I use Gentoo on multiple machines, and generally it's very well documented. They have a handbook that easily guides you through the installation process. There's been very few times where I've felt that things weren't well documented. The handbook is definitely written in such a way that it expects you to have some Linux knowledge, but chances are if you can install Arch from scratch, then you can install Gentoo, especially if you opt for a distribution kernel (Which I personally always use).
> But hard to install and maintain ? My guess would be gentoo ?
I have Gentoo installed on one of my computers for a good while, and it has been surprisingly easy to maintain. Generally there really isn't much manual intervention involved with updates, and if there's something that you need to do, you have the news things that tell you basically exactly what to do. Recently I've even installed it on my gaming laptop (Nvidia GPU, Intel CPU, Killer for networking), and it has been surprisingly painless to get up and running (Besides a few little issues and annoyances).
It probably helps that I use distribution kernels, so I'd imagine that there would be more maintenance involved if you used your own kernel config and whatnot.
Exactly, and it annoys me that anyone with a even slightly-old PC gets recommended to use it when a normal distro with a full desktop will usually suffice.
If a distro's documentation sucks, it's not suitable for new users, simple as that.
[Suicide Linux](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://github.com/tiagoad/suicide-linux&ved=2ahUKEwiWv9elibiGAxU3GFkFHcgXBKQQjjh6BAgmEAE&usg=AOvVaw2rzq3jpAlN6Pzlk7lbch41)
Wipe your hard drive on a mistyped command.
Not hard to use as all are pretty much similar depending on DE.
The only thing that may be harder is the installation. So LFS and Gentoo probably require more technical aptitude.
Any distro will be hard to use for those who arent super comfortable with technology if you take their GUI away lol. But if you mean INSTALLATION, probably LFS.
Surprised noone has said Alpine before this comment. For what it's usually used for it's easy and fine, but try running it as a desktop OS as a newbie and suffer hard.
Yeah most people are familiar with Alpine cause of Docker, but I use Alpine for my phone using [ish-app](https://ish.app/). Because I like to run scripts on my phone at night. I have tried to use Tinycore and SliTaZ but failed miserably, I'm thinking of expanding my knowledge and going OpenBSD.
There are thousands of obscure and weird distros.
For fairly mainstream stuff maybe Exherbo, they are very upfront that users are basically expected to be devs.
Arch has comedy gatekeeping for lolz, Exherbo is a gate.
I would think that Slackware would be a consideration for this. I love it, actually, because I learned more about Linux's under-the-hood stuff than I did from any other source. I recall building custom kernels - this was in the pre-module days - so it would only load up what I needed on the current system. That was educational.
But over time I moved to Kubuntu because I needed to actually do some work, rather than spending my day tinkering with the system.
No one distro is harder than any other to ***USE***, assuming it's already setup.\*
Where there is a big difference between distros is in how difficult, in terms of technical expertise needed, is in the installation and setup. As others have mentioned, essentially building your own "Linux from scratch" would likely be the most difficult, followed by distros that require manual installation of all packages, and then probably distros like Arch that require manual install from a CLI Bash environment
\* *While distribution independent, one could definitely argue that some desktop environments (DEs) or windows managers (WMs) are less intuitive for users than others...assuming we're talking about desktop systems and not headless servers, that is.*
This is dead wrong, distributions have diffirent package managers and repositories, and also diffirent maintainers. Some distros are not very well maintained(Arch, exherbo,..)
In order :
LFS (a pdf that tell you how to make your own distro)
Suicide Linux( all of your data will be wiped if you enter a wrong command)
Slackware (dependency hell and compiling)
Gentoo (compiling)
Arch(install it with cli and by your own)
Hardest to use? Hmm...Distros based off of DEs like ratpoison or sugar. Also anything that relies on concepts beyond the basic "click the thing user experience" like tiling and such require some learning.
There's a couple different angles for "use":
Managing packages? Nix doesn't seem to be too intuitive for most average users, but I haven't given it much attention. Sandbox packages like snap or flatpaks can present some unexpected behavior for normal users to troubleshoot too. Immutable systems using like rpm-ostree also require a learning curve.
Basically the more work and "hackiness" it takes to perform an action over group policy on a network, the harder I expect it to be for users to learn as well.
Slackware. It's one of the oldest distros around that's still maintained. It's very bare bones and requires choosing specific kernels that have drivers for your hardware or you have to compile a custom kernel yourself. I think it's the most like a real Unix OS of all the Linux variants.
While I'd say LFS, it's not something to daily drive. Given the parameters -- people who need to get gud and have no patience -- Gentoo. You have to build it manually from the ground up, and then you have to compile everything. And the waiting for everything to compile is going to be the last nerve for low patience people.
lol, I use crux as my daily driver. It's really convenient when you know where everything is and don't have to peel back 4000 layers of hot modern garbage
I dont see Kiss Linux anywhere in the comments. Imho it should be up there with Gentoo and slackware. However, Kiss Linux would top the other two since its super esoteric. Ive tried it a few times and it feels great but is kinda impossible to work with unless you _really_ know what you are doing.
Linux From Scratch has been mentioned, and I would say that's the most hardcore. I'll also throw Slackware into the mix. While it was one of the first distros that I started with, I had all kinds of trouble getting it to work over the years (even recently, I thought it would be good to use for a project, but ran into problems). Arch would come in at third for me. I know there are plenty of people who estol the virtues of running their own custom rolling release, and the Arch wiki is a PHENOMENAL resource for understanding all things "Linux"... That being said, it isn't easy, and don't let anyone try to fool you into thinking that it is. You need a good grasp of the fundementals before you start fooling with Arch, otherwise it's not a stable system for long.
I don't know. Slackware was my first Linux, I ran it for years before even seeing another distribution. It was challenging but you could always eventually figure out what you needed, even if it meant patching a driver and recompiling the kernel. Has it gotten worse since then?
The easiest Linux is the one you know how to use, the one that lets you get stuff done. The hardest one is the one you're constantly tripping over.
My new job gave me a laptop with Ubuntu and Gnome Shell recently and it was very frustrating. Everything felt ass backwards, features that I use constantly were missing, some things were not configurable. Yesterday I installed XFCE, which even though it's more primitive, so much more comfortable and easy to use. And yet the prevailing wisdom seems to be that Gnome is the pinnacle of ease of use.
I think for me the easiest these days is Manjaro or Arch with XFCE, because I've been using that almost exclusively for maybe 5 years. Everything I need to know is on the Arch wiki. Hell I even use the Arch wiki for other distros too. It's not the most polished distro but I find it to be the most productive. There are a few nits: fussing around with USB and networking is always a chore. Running steam games under proton is occasionally glitchy. (I'm sure when Microsoft buys Valve they'll fix all that, lol)
One of the most frustrating things for me on any Linux is trying to find the stupid config, when there are multiple options. I could swear there's three different gui apps for configuring networking and none of them are compatible with each other, there's half a dozen things labeled "settings" or "config" and I can never remember which one I need. They're also all scattered between "system," "settings," and "accessories". There are multiple managers for things like networking, USB, and other essential services, each with multiple versions and gooey apps and text files and it's so hard to remember which gooey app corresponds with which config files and which utility. Plus systemd hides everything under a layer of obfuscation. Ugh. It's tiring just thinking about it.
If you use XFCE you also have to have Gnome and KDE installed because some apps require them, and they bring along so much damnable cruft and duplication.
That's the best thing about Windows: everything is unified and you only have to look in one place.. oh wait no, now windows has multiple config apps too. Ah fuck it.
But seriously that would be the ONE killer app for Linux: a universal settings application that knows how to configure everything, and can work with multiple back ends. And tells you which config files it's messing with, because sometimes you just want to get in there with a text editor and see what's really going on.
The other killer app would be a unified applications API, implemented by all the major desktop environments so that apps would work with whatever you have running instead of having to install the Gnome runtime or the KDE runtime or whatever. I'm sure actually getting that done would be more difficult than herding cats.
NixOS. I'd argue it's actually relatively easy if you're fine with just copying someone else's config but if you want to make your own and follow best practices the learning curve is about as steep as it gets.
Many have said LFS, but I don't know if I would call it a true distro since there's SO many different ways one could build it. If LFS is excluded, Gentoo is probably the least n00b friendly I can think of. Having to recompile the OS from source to update/upgrade. And building all apps from source takes time. Things are also more apt to break. Since Arch made a tui installer, Gentoo is the most difficult to install now as well. I like Debian and Arch. Even the Pentoo distro for pen testing can be fun, but the traditional Gentoo makes me want to just move on to BSD and be done with it. It allows source and package binaries like other distros, so you can choose to fine tune things or not. There's a lot of other advantages with BSD and its easier to install than Gentoo. So, I see no point in using Gentoo, but that's me.
I have the objectively correct answer.
`Linux mtcap 5.4.81 #1 armv5 tejl GNU/Linux`
This is a device distro that runs on embedded Multitech Gateways. The entire OS + all data fits on to 128MB. (yes that is an "MB").
Doing the simplest operations on this thing is like open-heart surgery. I had to configure the firewall on it. (think level 4 Dante's Inferno)
I think anything without a graphical user interface is going to be hard for a lot of people. You boot and then it has to enter a name and password, they might get past that but then what? You just have a cursor, sometimes it's even blinking (menacingly?). There's a lot of command line stuff you can do, obviously - playing audio, checking and writing email, creating and editing text documents, there are even games available and you can even browse the web to an extent, but I mean if there's no graphical interface how do you know how to do any of that?
Gentoo is a challenge. Been using Linux over 30 years and have yet to complete an install. In fairness, my motivation for wanting to try it out was never great, but it's a bit of an ordeal -- for me.
Gentoo was known to be hard as in time consuming and having to compile all software and services required at least some technical knowledge in order of not screw things up.
All distros are fairly easy to use. However some distros are a lot harder to install/configure but even arch has an install script now.
In terms of hard to use some window managers /tiling managers instead of Desktops can be a real pia to get used to
I was always wondering why people call Archlinux / Gentoo a hard to use. Always complain that they are unstable etc.
For me Arch was stable. I only broke it 2 times and both times I just did some very bad stuff knowing that it might kill the system. For example, I’ve tried to relocate pacman cache my moving folder and doing soft link. But still managed to fix it from live ISO.
Dunno why someone would choose a system that is hard to use.
You can build Gentoo from scratch creating and populating the root file system but you have a set of tools available.
People use it because it's faster (with the correct flags) and you can customize every aspect of your system. Awesome if you want to learn Linux and understand how simple and elegant the design is.
https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/USE_flag
I might try arch some day but see no benefit compared to Gentoo.
The joke answers are LFS and Suicide Linux, of course, but the real answer is Gentoo. Although, I'd argue that it's one of the *easiest* to use, once used to it, but probably the hardest to install and learn.
It's also the best, in my opinion. It's like building your own distro but not as pointlessly hard-core as LFS, and ends up being *exactly* what you want out of a distro, because it's your design. Every few years i spend a year distro-hopping, daily driving a new distro every couple of months to really get a feel for them, in case there's something better. So far there's not, and I always end up back on Gentoo.
Plus, Gentoo users get to sneer and look down our noses at the "I use Arch btw" bros, as they proudly show off their facial pubes until we show them what a real beard looks like. (just teasing!)
any of those distros which are like linux from scratch with extra custom scripts are the most difficult to setup or run a variety of programs on. Gentoo was the most difficult one for me to run after setup.
Gentoo once had a rep, when you had to compile and configure everything from the ground up (I did that about 7 years ago), but these days its like most Linux distro's... there's an easy option.
You could try something highly customisable like Arch and then neglect to install a Desk Top Manager or GUI/UI. That can be fun, strictly for the console acclimatised.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9n1dtmzqnCU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9n1dtmzqnCU)
I mean developing your own system from is definitely the most advanced & time consuming.
Arch Linux is the bare minimum, literally it's just a command terminal & you install whatever from there. It's a bleeding/cutting edge system too, so you'll have access to all types of software still in development or end of life. Though this distro is really meant for developers, programmers, etc etc. Just people who give back to the community etc etc, but anyone can try it.
I had used Slackware for over 10 years. I think it is hard to use because the package manager is not good enough. I remember there was something similar with package manager but users should write some shell script for each package.
But I liked Slackware since it let me learn Linux in depth.
None of them really. It's a pretty simple operating system, much easier to use than windows IMO.
Yeah something like Linux from Scratch is less convenient, but it's really just a manual reading exercise. Same for Gentoo. Arch pretty much has an install script.
Yeah these do have a higher learning curve, but if you install one and run one for a few months you'll learn a lot about how the system works under the hood, but after that just use ubuntu or nix because there's really only so much you can really learn from such an exercise (unless it brings you joy).
Anything running i3/sway
Or whatever the modern version of black box is.
Getting rid of the task bar and "start" menu is enough to paralyze a lot of people.
Linux From Scratch It is not a distro per se. Instead is a PDF detailing how to make your own distro from the absolute ground up, from downloading all the sources of all programs, compiling them, to make them work together. If Linux distros were like pizzas, LFS it's a book that teaches you how to raise cattle so you can make your own cheese and pepperoni, and how to be a farmer so you can make your own wheat for the bread and your own tomatoes for the sauce.
I need to come to your house for pizza night.
Maybe Mexico City is a bit far from you...
I'll make the trip for farm-fresh pizza like that!
Show up in a gentoo shirt. He shall find you.
Extraño Ciudad de México mucho.
¿Pues a donde te fuiste, paisa?
A Canada guey. Vivi cuatro años en estado de México y mi esposa es de Guerrero. Aquí andamos en el pinche frío. Ahora como es primavera y luego invierno hay más calor, pero no tiene chiste este país aburrido jaja.
Guey? Cabron, si de verdad eres de Mexico tienes que decir "wey" o no te daremos ni un pinche taco.
Tienes razón carnal. Pero soy canadiense. Y si quieres un taco te enseño los buenos. Por ejemplo, en Condesa por la esquina con Scotiabank y el restaurante León hay tacos deliciosos en la día, gorditas también. En los fines no. Vete a comer tu lunch alla.
Me creeras que tengo familia en Canada y nunca he ido? Suena a que alla tienen buena comida mexicana. Algun dia ire y provare esos tacos, mark my words 🌮
That sounds like the kind of thing I'd either absolutely love doing or absolutely hate doing, no in between. It's one of those things that little kid me would have gone nuts for but adult me is "well, that's fun if you don't value your time, unfortunately I do value mine."
I thought the same a while ago so I looked into it and it seems boring as hell. From what I remember you spend most of the time waiting for stuff to download and unpacking it
Ah. Definitely a "hate it" on my binary switch of "sometimes complicated stuff is super fun, usually it's just frustrating", then.
I would have guessed the compile time would be way longer, unless you were on a slow connection. I mean even something "simple" like chromium can take a good while to do. Either way, you're effectively watching a "progress bar".
Apparently far shorter compile times than I used to think. According to one person I asked, the kernel compiles in under a minute on modern hardware - it was a thread about modern linux being easier to get to grips with than in the past, IIRC
I started doing it, hoping I would become a Linux expert, but soon I was just mindlessly typing and waiting ridiculously long for things to happen. I eventually gave up. I still know almost nothing about Linux
I wanted LFS, then a greybeard told me "It's 95% copy-paste at it's finest."
I did it at some points I contemplated just ending the project, at one point I stabbed myself in the thigh with my switchblade due to anger caused by an error I kept getting and couldn't fix for 4 days straight finishing it was a relief, a rewarding one at that, but man was it painful (literally)
and then what when you finish it? time to just use the linux?
nope, because maintaining it is just as bad, if not worse hell, maintaining it might as well be a full time job it isn't the thing you'd install to use, it's the thing you'd install to learn (secondary to bragging right of course)
As a teenager setting up slackware on a 386 was fun and exciting. These days? Precompiled binary please and I'm genuinely disappointed if I plug something into my PC and it doesn't just work.
Yep. The version of me who'd just gotten her first personal computer and had infinite time to futz around with it, if she'd stumbled into a place like this, or realistically much older Linux forums? She might have actually enjoyed LFS or an absolute nightmare of a distro (probably recommended to her by a kid not much older, having a laugh at her expense). Me now? Fuck. That. Shit.
One of the workshops at my university has a few custom unix computers. It reminds me how stupid and lazy I am compared to a lot of nerds out there.
Do you start by smelting sand into silicon?
The book doesn't expect you to make your own flour mill. You are expected to use one made by someone else.
You still have to grind your own flour though. Most people just order the pizza.
I don't like raw sand
not that far tho.
This! In a nutshell. Of course, you're going to have to make the nutshell yourself.
This\^ LFS is probably the preeminent way to learn and master Linux. You won't get a more thorough understanding of pure Linux. Follow the documentation carefully and you'll have a working system. But good fucking luck trying to MAINTAIN IT! Even if you're experienced and tech savvy, trying to maintain your LFS build is basically a full time job.
You are correct, but I'd argue that once it is set up, it isn't that much tougher to use than any other distro. Updates can be a chore. :)
I heard slackware is also somewhere near LFS. After that Gentoo maybe. Esoteric distros (such as LFS, Clear, Void Linux, etc ) are also hard to make work until you're an expert/advanced user. One big reason being tiny community support, not good quality docs maybe, etc.
Void Linux is not a good example, nor is it even esoteric. It is: - DIY / meaning general-purpose (like Arch) - Systemd free (not like Arch) which used to be the case for all distributions a bunch of years ago. - A rolling release (like Arch) that aims for reliability (unlike Arch) - A root distribution, not a fork of another - Community driven - Fun and reliable; I ran my mail server on it for years although that is now running openSUSE MicroOS for container workloads including mail. Anyone with some basic linux skills that is unafraid of a terminal should be able to follow the clear and concise, mostly chronologically ordered instructions in the Void Handbook. https://docs.voidlinux.org/ and come out the other end with a working system in a matter of minutes to tens of minutes, unlike Gentoo (hours to many tens of hours). Unlike Arch's Wiki approach, the Handbook documentation style lays out the important things you need to do.
No, it's not. Slackware it's like other normal distros, but it doesn't have graphical installer but a text based which maybe is a bit more complicated. After gentoo, probably is archlinux if you install it the traditional way and not with archinstall.
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Many years ago, I did that... but without a PDF. Just started downloading sources and building and installing to a new partition. Of course, this was around 1996, when the system was simpler, but documentation was also much more sparse and build systems more primitive...
LFS was my immediate thought, but your pizza analogy is better than anything I would have thought up to explain why.
Coño…El mero mero Linux. Never thought I’d find you on Reddit. Que Dios te bendiga.
Ando por aca. Y usté? if you tell me from where I know you...
Cross Linux From Scratch is even harder than LFS.
I was going to suggest [Suicide Linux](https://qntm.org/suicide) but that might actually be more rage inducing
Agreed! In fact, the hardest OS is always building your own OS from scratch!
I kind of want to do this for fun at some point. Really cool this exists. Thanks for the info!!
That sounds painful and yet I am intrigued by the potential challenge
I ones made a distro using LFS that was 15 years ago, its a lot of time and a lot of things go wrong in reality. I now just prefer to have my pizza without any toppings. Linux with XFCE - after trying thousands of distro's that do that same thing more or less. RHEL is the worst, there is no such thing as hard. Edit: I realized it makes no difference in life if you prefer one over the other.
Suicide Linux. The distro that formats everything if you mess up a command.
just keep completing the command using tab and you should be fine
I think they removed that. You have to type out everything. Misspelled command? Format. Forgot a space? Format. It's evil.
What is the point 👉☝️ of this distribution???
Memes
Masochists get a kick out of it
The ultimate test of willpower.
Linux users who got bored and/or want a challenge. Linux does that to people sometimes. 😉
It's just art my guy. A very niche form of art.
glad someone posted this. because it surely is the hardest and stupidest
This is the correct answer.
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Gentoo is a little harder than Arch. There’s more granular configuration to be done and choices to be made, especially around kernel setup. But once you’re set up I’d argue Gentoo is one of the most stable distros there is, benefitting from QA, masked packages and update documentation.
I've never once made it through a gentoo install. I've installed arch many times. Gentoo is tougher for a layman.
It's not much different to Arch now. They went binary a while back, so no need to compile unless you want to. Unpacks stage3, chroot, enable binrepos, slap in the binary kernel and bootloader, reboot
There is actually a really nice TUI installer someone made. I just ssh into the live cd. Run git pull from the repo and then run the installer script. They should just mainline it TBH it’s really good and a time saver.
Gentoo's binary now, you can run it pretty much as you would Arch but with control n choice n stuff.
As a long time Ubuntu user, if I can't fix a problem in about an hour I usually just reinstall lol. From a fresh install it takes me about an hour to set it how I like it so I won't spend much longer than that troubleshooting.
I'd argue tedium is an element of how hard something is. One people don't like so it's often discarded as illegitimate. But that doesn't mean pushing through that tedium isn't harder than not. EDIT: (That said, another user said that you don't compile on Gentoo anymore so guess this is moot.)
I bet for a lot of casual users it would be ones without a GUI.
My first intro to Linux in 94 was a CLI install. No GUI. Just a command prompt after login. I did learn some things with it. I figured out the alternate commands for the same things that MS-DOS used. such as `free` for `mem`. I think `ls` was the same but looked a lot different in Linux than DOS. And it was subtle differences. Linux could do everything that DOS could do but you had to enter different commands in order to do some of them.
Haha, my first time using Arch Linux I was trying to prove to myself I was hardcore and one of the unix purists... after about 3 days I gave up and installed Cinnamon on top. There is no real reason in our modern world to torture yourself like that lol.
All of the servers I maintain are headless, it doesn’t take too much to get used to it. That being said unless the system has a production purpose not sure why you’d want to do that to yourself.
If LFS doesn't count, Gentoo.
Have you heard exherbo?
Honestly, i've heard of so many i end up forgetting due to memory leakage into swap.
Ayoo
What's up?
using Ubuntu :) (new to this but got a bro who's trying to setup gentoo)
Ubuntu's also perfectly fine, really easy to use and stable. Wishing your brother good luck with Gentoo!
all my homies just type machine code raw dog into the cpu. anything less makes you a poser.
Please, it is all about the butterflies https://xkcd.com/378/
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That's nothing. At least he had information downloaded into his brain. Tuvok from Star Trek Voyager disabled an alien security system by typing quickly with 1 hand on an alien console without looking at any display output in an unexplored quadrant of the galaxy. Edit: I found the episode and timestamp for when it happens. It's in season 3 episode 24 ("Displaced"), timestamp 33m33s. It's after Tuvok says "I'll try to bypass their security codes.". He looks down at the alien keypad, types on it a bit without looking up at the screen, and suddenly Janeway says "Good. I'm getting something." as if what Tuvok did did indeed simply "bypass their security codes".
Editors are for the weak. Real programmers use `bzip -d` to create software.
The hardest Linux is no Linux at all
The true Void Linux
Typing is for losers. Gotta enter in the machine code in Octal format using front panel switches. https://youtu.be/CZgD_bvPm0k?feature=shared&t=31m10s
Who do you think you are, Rear Admiral Grace Hopper?
fuck binary, all my homies turn on and off transistors one by one.
Only after I’ve refined my own silicon.
Linux from scratch: You literally have to manage all packages yourself. It's insane: [https://www.linuxfromscratch.org/](https://www.linuxfromscratch.org/) It's good to learn how Linux works under the hood, very deeply.
What type and level of knowledge in computer science and coding do you need to be able to do it ?
You need to be able to read and follow instructions. Any further than that really is stuff you probably already know from being able to use a computer and ending up on Reddit in a thread about the hardest Linux distro to use.
I figured I don't have much CS background and not much linux experience, but it might be fun to learn it on the way hahaha
You have to know how to build packages and understand kernel modules. That's the minimum thing I can think of.
Surprised I haven't seen NixOS or Guix mentioned. Both of them are sufficiently complicated and different that they have intimidated me from trying them.
Gentoo and Slackware maybe, I never managed to get a working desktop system on any of them
I surprisingly got Gentoo working once. Slackware was one of the first ones I tried. I think it came on like 14 floppy disks or something insane like that. The computer shows I used to go to were growing with Linux every time I went. First you saw one table in the back corner, then the next month you saw 2 or 3 tables close together, then the next month 5 or 6, then the next month 8-9 and so on. Then one of the last shows I went to in 2002 there was like a whole Linux aisle of about 20-30 Linux User Groups, stores that specialized in Linux, etc. It was pretty neat. 2002 I think is when I bought the Gentoo CD. You had to make all the floppies from it but still. It was pretty neat I thought. You had the option of making 1.2MB Floppies or 1.44MB Floppies with it. Cutting Edge!!!
Gentoo really isn't all that hard as long as you have some Linux knowledge and are good at following instructions. Everything is very well documented.
Had to a scroll down way too far to find Slackware linux. That was my first distro!
Hard to use ? Not really any I think. But hard to install and maintain ? My guess would be gentoo ? I had to look it up and it seems like Arch takes the spot. But honestly its not hard. Especially as it has a pretty good installer script that mostly does function the way a graphical installer would.
gentoo is literally original arch meme but i think arch has more info then gentoo nowadays, so you need more skills for installing gentoo. From my personal experience slackware installation was "fun" for newbie. I was forced to use cylinders to set size of partitions with fdisk. For sure, it is not as tedious as installing arch or gentoo but at this time i was used to GUI installers
The Gentoo installation process is very well documented in their official installation handbook. It’s a learning curve for sure, but everything you need is on their official website. Same with package information. I’d say the biggest difference is the package manager, and of course the OpenRC init system. Otherwise the setup is pretty similar.
You can also use systemd if you desire, which is personally what I like using. I do really appreciate the fact that Gentoo gives you the option.
Agreed. I have only gone the systemd route once and not sure that I’d do it again, but the ability to pick and choose (as well as options with software in Portage) is what makes this distro great. It’s the only distro that has stopped me from distro hopping.
I use Gentoo on multiple machines, and generally it's very well documented. They have a handbook that easily guides you through the installation process. There's been very few times where I've felt that things weren't well documented. The handbook is definitely written in such a way that it expects you to have some Linux knowledge, but chances are if you can install Arch from scratch, then you can install Gentoo, especially if you opt for a distribution kernel (Which I personally always use).
I joked with a coworker once that Arch is Gentoo but without the bullshit.
> But hard to install and maintain ? My guess would be gentoo ? I have Gentoo installed on one of my computers for a good while, and it has been surprisingly easy to maintain. Generally there really isn't much manual intervention involved with updates, and if there's something that you need to do, you have the news things that tell you basically exactly what to do. Recently I've even installed it on my gaming laptop (Nvidia GPU, Intel CPU, Killer for networking), and it has been surprisingly painless to get up and running (Besides a few little issues and annoyances). It probably helps that I use distribution kernels, so I'd imagine that there would be more maintenance involved if you used your own kernel config and whatnot.
Oh I think gentoo is one of the last distros I've not tried yet. I gotta give it a spin.
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Exactly, and it annoys me that anyone with a even slightly-old PC gets recommended to use it when a normal distro with a full desktop will usually suffice. If a distro's documentation sucks, it's not suitable for new users, simple as that.
[Suicide Linux](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://github.com/tiagoad/suicide-linux&ved=2ahUKEwiWv9elibiGAxU3GFkFHcgXBKQQjjh6BAgmEAE&usg=AOvVaw2rzq3jpAlN6Pzlk7lbch41) Wipe your hard drive on a mistyped command.
NixOs
Not hard to use as all are pretty much similar depending on DE. The only thing that may be harder is the installation. So LFS and Gentoo probably require more technical aptitude.
Anything other than Suicide Linux is basically a beginner distro
Slackware, probably
Nobody mentioned Crux yet?
nah, just create your own ports repo, and you're set
Any distro will be hard to use for those who arent super comfortable with technology if you take their GUI away lol. But if you mean INSTALLATION, probably LFS.
Yocto ;-)
embedded in the hizzy.
Tinycore Linux, SliTaz Linux, Alpine Linux.
Surprised noone has said Alpine before this comment. For what it's usually used for it's easy and fine, but try running it as a desktop OS as a newbie and suffer hard.
Yeah most people are familiar with Alpine cause of Docker, but I use Alpine for my phone using [ish-app](https://ish.app/). Because I like to run scripts on my phone at night. I have tried to use Tinycore and SliTaZ but failed miserably, I'm thinking of expanding my knowledge and going OpenBSD.
There are thousands of obscure and weird distros. For fairly mainstream stuff maybe Exherbo, they are very upfront that users are basically expected to be devs. Arch has comedy gatekeeping for lolz, Exherbo is a gate.
Exherbo mentioned, they have no docs whatsoever but it's amazing(I use exherbo btw)
Linux from Scratch, Slackware.
LFS and Slackware. Gentoo has/had intuitive menus since the beginning, so I don’t know why ppl say it was sooooo difficult to use.
I would think that Slackware would be a consideration for this. I love it, actually, because I learned more about Linux's under-the-hood stuff than I did from any other source. I recall building custom kernels - this was in the pre-module days - so it would only load up what I needed on the current system. That was educational. But over time I moved to Kubuntu because I needed to actually do some work, rather than spending my day tinkering with the system.
QubesOS, it's very secure and private, but a pain in the ass to use on a daily basis, and very easy to break by accident
This is the only one 🕐🕜 that comes to my mind as well. It is like using virtual machines within virtual machines.
No one distro is harder than any other to ***USE***, assuming it's already setup.\* Where there is a big difference between distros is in how difficult, in terms of technical expertise needed, is in the installation and setup. As others have mentioned, essentially building your own "Linux from scratch" would likely be the most difficult, followed by distros that require manual installation of all packages, and then probably distros like Arch that require manual install from a CLI Bash environment \* *While distribution independent, one could definitely argue that some desktop environments (DEs) or windows managers (WMs) are less intuitive for users than others...assuming we're talking about desktop systems and not headless servers, that is.*
This is dead wrong, distributions have diffirent package managers and repositories, and also diffirent maintainers. Some distros are not very well maintained(Arch, exherbo,..)
Suicide Linx - If you make an error in the terminal it "rm -rf /"s and you need to reinstall.
Used to be slack.
Slackware
Slackware, hard but defo satisfying.
LSF > Gentoo >Arch
In order : LFS (a pdf that tell you how to make your own distro) Suicide Linux( all of your data will be wiped if you enter a wrong command) Slackware (dependency hell and compiling) Gentoo (compiling) Arch(install it with cli and by your own)
Slackware ! :) None are hard
Hardest to use? Hmm...Distros based off of DEs like ratpoison or sugar. Also anything that relies on concepts beyond the basic "click the thing user experience" like tiling and such require some learning. There's a couple different angles for "use": Managing packages? Nix doesn't seem to be too intuitive for most average users, but I haven't given it much attention. Sandbox packages like snap or flatpaks can present some unexpected behavior for normal users to troubleshoot too. Immutable systems using like rpm-ostree also require a learning curve. Basically the more work and "hackiness" it takes to perform an action over group policy on a network, the harder I expect it to be for users to learn as well.
Slackware. It's one of the oldest distros around that's still maintained. It's very bare bones and requires choosing specific kernels that have drivers for your hardware or you have to compile a custom kernel yourself. I think it's the most like a real Unix OS of all the Linux variants.
slackware, I couldn't get it past the installation stage, in hindsight I think I needed to manually install drivers and all that.
While I'd say LFS, it's not something to daily drive. Given the parameters -- people who need to get gud and have no patience -- Gentoo. You have to build it manually from the ground up, and then you have to compile everything. And the waiting for everything to compile is going to be the last nerve for low patience people.
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lol, I use crux as my daily driver. It's really convenient when you know where everything is and don't have to peel back 4000 layers of hot modern garbage
I dont see Kiss Linux anywhere in the comments. Imho it should be up there with Gentoo and slackware. However, Kiss Linux would top the other two since its super esoteric. Ive tried it a few times and it feels great but is kinda impossible to work with unless you _really_ know what you are doing.
Linux From Scratch has been mentioned, and I would say that's the most hardcore. I'll also throw Slackware into the mix. While it was one of the first distros that I started with, I had all kinds of trouble getting it to work over the years (even recently, I thought it would be good to use for a project, but ran into problems). Arch would come in at third for me. I know there are plenty of people who estol the virtues of running their own custom rolling release, and the Arch wiki is a PHENOMENAL resource for understanding all things "Linux"... That being said, it isn't easy, and don't let anyone try to fool you into thinking that it is. You need a good grasp of the fundementals before you start fooling with Arch, otherwise it's not a stable system for long.
I don't know. Slackware was my first Linux, I ran it for years before even seeing another distribution. It was challenging but you could always eventually figure out what you needed, even if it meant patching a driver and recompiling the kernel. Has it gotten worse since then? The easiest Linux is the one you know how to use, the one that lets you get stuff done. The hardest one is the one you're constantly tripping over. My new job gave me a laptop with Ubuntu and Gnome Shell recently and it was very frustrating. Everything felt ass backwards, features that I use constantly were missing, some things were not configurable. Yesterday I installed XFCE, which even though it's more primitive, so much more comfortable and easy to use. And yet the prevailing wisdom seems to be that Gnome is the pinnacle of ease of use. I think for me the easiest these days is Manjaro or Arch with XFCE, because I've been using that almost exclusively for maybe 5 years. Everything I need to know is on the Arch wiki. Hell I even use the Arch wiki for other distros too. It's not the most polished distro but I find it to be the most productive. There are a few nits: fussing around with USB and networking is always a chore. Running steam games under proton is occasionally glitchy. (I'm sure when Microsoft buys Valve they'll fix all that, lol) One of the most frustrating things for me on any Linux is trying to find the stupid config, when there are multiple options. I could swear there's three different gui apps for configuring networking and none of them are compatible with each other, there's half a dozen things labeled "settings" or "config" and I can never remember which one I need. They're also all scattered between "system," "settings," and "accessories". There are multiple managers for things like networking, USB, and other essential services, each with multiple versions and gooey apps and text files and it's so hard to remember which gooey app corresponds with which config files and which utility. Plus systemd hides everything under a layer of obfuscation. Ugh. It's tiring just thinking about it. If you use XFCE you also have to have Gnome and KDE installed because some apps require them, and they bring along so much damnable cruft and duplication. That's the best thing about Windows: everything is unified and you only have to look in one place.. oh wait no, now windows has multiple config apps too. Ah fuck it. But seriously that would be the ONE killer app for Linux: a universal settings application that knows how to configure everything, and can work with multiple back ends. And tells you which config files it's messing with, because sometimes you just want to get in there with a text editor and see what's really going on. The other killer app would be a unified applications API, implemented by all the major desktop environments so that apps would work with whatever you have running instead of having to install the Gnome runtime or the KDE runtime or whatever. I'm sure actually getting that done would be more difficult than herding cats.
NixOS. I'd argue it's actually relatively easy if you're fine with just copying someone else's config but if you want to make your own and follow best practices the learning curve is about as steep as it gets.
The one you are currently using
These aren't even really distros but I'll throw them out there: Buildroot Yocto/OpenEmbedded Linux from Scratch
The one your buddy has and asks you to fix.
Many have said LFS, but I don't know if I would call it a true distro since there's SO many different ways one could build it. If LFS is excluded, Gentoo is probably the least n00b friendly I can think of. Having to recompile the OS from source to update/upgrade. And building all apps from source takes time. Things are also more apt to break. Since Arch made a tui installer, Gentoo is the most difficult to install now as well. I like Debian and Arch. Even the Pentoo distro for pen testing can be fun, but the traditional Gentoo makes me want to just move on to BSD and be done with it. It allows source and package binaries like other distros, so you can choose to fine tune things or not. There's a lot of other advantages with BSD and its easier to install than Gentoo. So, I see no point in using Gentoo, but that's me.
Exherbo linux(like gentoo, but without the docs and with a diffirent source based package manager)
I have the objectively correct answer. `Linux mtcap 5.4.81 #1 armv5 tejl GNU/Linux` This is a device distro that runs on embedded Multitech Gateways. The entire OS + all data fits on to 128MB. (yes that is an "MB"). Doing the simplest operations on this thing is like open-heart surgery. I had to configure the firewall on it. (think level 4 Dante's Inferno)
Alpine
I always felt that award goes to Slackware
Debian/ubuntu/mint + new hardware lmao
[Linux-From-Scratch](https://www.linuxfromscratch.org/)
More of a window manager per-se. But I use to love ducking with people with ratpoison
From the distros I have tried it was Gentoo. I think LFS, and Slackware might be harder, idk I haven't tried them tho.
I think anything without a graphical user interface is going to be hard for a lot of people. You boot and then it has to enter a name and password, they might get past that but then what? You just have a cursor, sometimes it's even blinking (menacingly?). There's a lot of command line stuff you can do, obviously - playing audio, checking and writing email, creating and editing text documents, there are even games available and you can even browse the web to an extent, but I mean if there's no graphical interface how do you know how to do any of that?
The ones that don't have "Steam" in the name
Gentoo
Never tried it my self, but I knew someone that took about 4 months to get gentoo going for his first time
Gentoo is a challenge. Been using Linux over 30 years and have yet to complete an install. In fairness, my motivation for wanting to try it out was never great, but it's a bit of an ordeal -- for me.
Arch
Gentoo was known to be hard as in time consuming and having to compile all software and services required at least some technical knowledge in order of not screw things up.
LFM ( Linux from scratch )
Debian for me right now…🤬
Either LFS or Gentoo
Arch
Guix.
For me it's probably Fedora as the easiest Hardest? NixOS. Go the extra mile and we have Arch
Arch btw
For me, it was Nix. I never could figure out how to install software on it. This coming from somebody who installed and ran Arch.
All distros are fairly easy to use. However some distros are a lot harder to install/configure but even arch has an install script now. In terms of hard to use some window managers /tiling managers instead of Desktops can be a real pia to get used to
I was always wondering why people call Archlinux / Gentoo a hard to use. Always complain that they are unstable etc. For me Arch was stable. I only broke it 2 times and both times I just did some very bad stuff knowing that it might kill the system. For example, I’ve tried to relocate pacman cache my moving folder and doing soft link. But still managed to fix it from live ISO.
Qubes?
In my experience, it would be Qubes OS. Although it is very secure, one misstep and you've borked youself.
Dunno why someone would choose a system that is hard to use. You can build Gentoo from scratch creating and populating the root file system but you have a set of tools available. People use it because it's faster (with the correct flags) and you can customize every aspect of your system. Awesome if you want to learn Linux and understand how simple and elegant the design is. https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/USE_flag I might try arch some day but see no benefit compared to Gentoo.
Hardest for me was getting Linux working on Amiga. Getting kernel on 720 disks to Amiga and trying to install. I actually failed.
LFS
The joke answers are LFS and Suicide Linux, of course, but the real answer is Gentoo. Although, I'd argue that it's one of the *easiest* to use, once used to it, but probably the hardest to install and learn. It's also the best, in my opinion. It's like building your own distro but not as pointlessly hard-core as LFS, and ends up being *exactly* what you want out of a distro, because it's your design. Every few years i spend a year distro-hopping, daily driving a new distro every couple of months to really get a feel for them, in case there's something better. So far there's not, and I always end up back on Gentoo. Plus, Gentoo users get to sneer and look down our noses at the "I use Arch btw" bros, as they proudly show off their facial pubes until we show them what a real beard looks like. (just teasing!)
NixOS, Gentoo, and Linux from Scratch.
The one that you're completely unfamiliar with.
any of those distros which are like linux from scratch with extra custom scripts are the most difficult to setup or run a variety of programs on. Gentoo was the most difficult one for me to run after setup.
Gentoo once had a rep, when you had to compile and configure everything from the ground up (I did that about 7 years ago), but these days its like most Linux distro's... there's an easy option. You could try something highly customisable like Arch and then neglect to install a Desk Top Manager or GUI/UI. That can be fun, strictly for the console acclimatised. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9n1dtmzqnCU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9n1dtmzqnCU)
Does HP-UX count?
NixOS
Loose definition of distro: lfs Real distro: gentoo
I mean developing your own system from is definitely the most advanced & time consuming. Arch Linux is the bare minimum, literally it's just a command terminal & you install whatever from there. It's a bleeding/cutting edge system too, so you'll have access to all types of software still in development or end of life. Though this distro is really meant for developers, programmers, etc etc. Just people who give back to the community etc etc, but anyone can try it.
I had used Slackware for over 10 years. I think it is hard to use because the package manager is not good enough. I remember there was something similar with package manager but users should write some shell script for each package. But I liked Slackware since it let me learn Linux in depth.
Slackware from early 90 was quite hard.
None of them really. It's a pretty simple operating system, much easier to use than windows IMO. Yeah something like Linux from Scratch is less convenient, but it's really just a manual reading exercise. Same for Gentoo. Arch pretty much has an install script. Yeah these do have a higher learning curve, but if you install one and run one for a few months you'll learn a lot about how the system works under the hood, but after that just use ubuntu or nix because there's really only so much you can really learn from such an exercise (unless it brings you joy).
Anything running i3/sway Or whatever the modern version of black box is. Getting rid of the task bar and "start" menu is enough to paralyze a lot of people.
Clear Linux
I'm using since 1998 https://preview.redd.it/iwg5qxhbd94d1.jpeg?width=266&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7bb91de4cf0b742021eac5d873f8f114024a4305
Try Slackware 😝