My initial attempts at running Linux as a daily threw me off. Had a couple Comp Sci friends in college recommend switching, but they led me to distros with pre-compiled binaries and installation wizards. I’d install, get dumped out at a desktop, then ask “And what do I do now?”. I had no idea how the filesystem was organized, etc.

I stumbled across LinuxFromScratch somehow. Took a few months and ran through the installation three times before I felt I had a good handle on what was going on. Then I tried to tackle compiling X.org and all its dependencies, learning exactly why a package manager is useful.

That lead me to Gentoo. I haven’t found a problem running it in the last ~20 years that I couldn’t solve, so I’ve stuck with it. Now it’s just comfortable. I’ve slapped other distributions on other boxes (Mint, Kubuntu, etc), and even on laptops for family members, but they don’t feel like home.

I’ve used Gentoo on my main desktop for decades.

Anything else in the house gets Kubuntu on it, 'cause ain’t nobody got time for that.

I went through LFS’ build process three times. By the third time, I felt like I might actually have a clue as to what’s going on. Then I tried build X.org, and discovered what package managers are for. Tried a few “standard” distributions with their binary packages, none of which satisfied my newly discovered control freak tendencies. Ended up settling on Gentoo, been with it ever since.

The meme is definitely LFS.