My fist Linux attempt was Slackware. It took me 2 weeks to figure out how to boot the cd on an old 486. once I finally figured out sbootmgr and burned through a case of flippies, I couldn't have been happier. Now, with Ubuntu and KDE on all our university boxes, I am missing the simple Fluxbox. All in all, it was a bitch to add programs to the system until you got the hang of it. Even then, hardware support at the time sucked, so I ran VESA graphics and through the 10 mb ethernet nic.
Requardless, I compiled my first kernel and had a hell lot of fun with it.
Then I did a stage one Gentoo install... That was fun... NOT. But I did learn A LOT, so I'll mention i
t.
Today with Ubuntu, I miss some of the control I had with my init scripts (I delved under the GUI in ubuntu yet.)
And I must say, OH how WINE has gotten SOOO much better these last few years.