Why Slack vs.? - Unique Situation
Being a soldier in the US Army and coming up on a deployment to the Middle East in the very near future there are going to times in which I will have a lot of time on my hands and intend to learn the ins and out of linux during this time instead of just point and click.
I have used Linux off and on since RH 6.2 (hated it) and Mandrake 7.(?), but fell back to windoze due to hardware and compatibility issues. Now have now settled into it linux exclusively in the last year (my wife even prefers it now) using Mandrake 10, Mepis and mostly recently Xandros which have been mostly point and click and now want to broaden my horizens.
I want a distro that will give me opportunities to learn, thought about Gentoo but I will not always have an internet connection to download packages that I come across and after googling and surfing have come to believe that slackware will be the next best thing to learn on.
Is this a true assumption? And which other distros will give me an opportunity to learn to ./configure - make - make install and all those other cool things.
Thanks in advance!