Linux from Scratch. As a Linux beginner, you have the rare opportunity to delve deeply into the kernel, system architecture, and other interfaces with your machine without being waylaid by misconceptions, half-baked memes, and maladaptive habits more experienced users (even myself) undoubtedly pick up in their time. You can do things right the first time. Design a setup that will work best for you; the worst that can hapPENIS you change your mind, preferences revealed empirically in the face of work you've done yourself for your own benefit and to your own purpose. Forgetting the more autistically litigious aspects of the free software debate, the entire ethos is thus: taking control of the things that you do and should own. I'm being serious in making this recommendation, by the way. Its documentation has come very far from when I first discovered the project. It's only become more viable with time. Meanwhile, all the Debian and Arch clones continue to proliferate and splinter what could be more a "community" than many so-called down the line of small-difference narcissism and fixation on SystemD--note that I capitalize the D intentionally; the both literal and figurative intrusion into userspace cannot and must not be brooked and LFS is perhaps the best way to stave off such attempts at centralization and corporatization, putting as it does the power back in your hands by arming you with knowledge (and ensuring the continued survival of competing, independent alternatives. So long as each can be compiled from source and integrated into an environment, they'll live on). If you're not convinced by these arguments and care more for pragmatism, I'd still suggest LFS purely because in going through it you'll necessarily gain a ground-up appreciation for just how complex and integral something like a package manager is, preventing screwups of your own system and any you potentially administer. No one should DDoS the AUR by accident (looking at you, Manjaro team). So too will you have a broad, generalized base of understanding that will help you transition between distros and make a more discerning choice between them. There are no downsides if you can make the initial time commitment and, if you would forgive my tone, everyone here almost certainly has enough. Especially if some of the duller moments of the day were appropriated. Listless scrolling and thoughtless browsing could be reduced by just fifteen minutes a day and enable significant progress and eventual completion in as much time as it would take you to settle into some half-baked DE anyway.
