My story with GNU/Linux goes back couple of years ago, i tried many distros but none of them lasted more than month, sometimes not even 5 minutes, it was different back then, hardware drivers were rare, i knew almost nothing about, very few of my acquaintances knew about it either.

Later, when i actually started using linux, it was with the famous german distro SUSE, it was version 9.0 with kernel 2.4.something, well that versioin of the distro is what made use GNU/Linux, i installed with just a few clicks of "Next" buttons, it supported all my laptop hardware, it ran smoothly.

I used the installation for more than six month. And one of the things that motivated me more is that the my HSF Conexant modem was working just fine, due to a FreeSoftware driver, later there was version 9.1, 9.2 of SUSE, but i didnt' upgrade because of there is no FreeSoftware driver for kernel 2.6.x.

As i was getting more and more familiar with GNU/Linux and it's commands and tools, i started disliking SUSE, cause it's too easy, or shall i say it's for Beginners, those how don't know anything about command prompt. Well i don't want to claim that i am GNU/Linux Expert but i like to type commands, to know what's exaclty happening, i like to get my hands dirty with code. In addition that SUSE wasn't fundematally matching my expectation of a FreeSoftware Linux Distribution, Opera, RealPlayer, prperiatery Xmms codes and more were installed with SUSE, well i'm not saying these are not good application or anything like that, but i'm saying they are not FreeSoftware. I almost forgot, Yast, or more precisly Yast2, the extremely powerful configuration tool of SUSE, back then it wasn't FreeSoftware, (i heard later it became FreeSoftware, but i'm not sure). The biggest problem about Yast2 that it's too powerful, so powerful that i couldn't do anything without it on other distros, it was like i learnt to use SUSE not GNU/Linux. I started searching and looking for other GNU/Linux distributions to use

RedHat was a very powerful candidate, but i just didn't like it, RedHat being so famous and successful, and having two variants, Desktop (which became later what in know now as Fedora Project) and the Enterprise version, well i don't like such distinctions, besides that RedHat didn't -and still doesn't- ship with NTFS support, (i didn't know how to install the NTFS module back then), XMMS didn't work fine (no mp3 codecs), doesn't have Yast2 which i very well knew. So i skipped Redhat.

Mandrake was out of question to, it's like SUSE, but even less. I tried Debian once, it was too hard for a begginer, plus Debian isn't really made for home use.

I always heard of Slackware, but i also heard that it was old distro, i didn't want old apps, plus i was never able to get the CDs, so always skipped it, till i once sow Slackware 10.1 at a local CD store Bakdash, (he's the best GNU/Linux CD store in Latakia) so i gave it a shot, i installed Slackware 10.1, It was one second great GNU/Linux installation i ever did. Everything worked, not from the very beginning, but then i knew how to confiugre things, so it Slackware worked just fine with me.

I used it for couple of month, then suddenly my XServer configuration were damaged and the xserver didn't start anymore, i digged in the internet, could'n fix it, so i made another user and worked, then i blew again, i realized that the problem occured after i switch to Gnome, then back to KDE (the best two Desktop Environment for GNU/Linux) but i had my graduation project to work on, in which is was very late on schedule, and had my final year exams, so i moved to real world and say "I need an OS to work on my laptop NOW", so i got back to M$ Windows.

During these years i also installed CollegeLinux, a very nice distro, but it's slim, with not to many apps. I once tripped over Gentoo's site, i was like the idea of Portage, but i never could install a working installation on muy hardware, not even with Stage3 precompiled packages, -maybe i should dedicate more time to the installation process next time-.

Now, as of writing this post, i'm running Slackware 10.2 on my laptop.