Slackware was my alternative to Gentoo at the time. Gentoo was cool because it was all compiled, more efficient etc. That shit sounded good to me as a teenager. I remember one summer I had the Gentoo ISO all burnt on a CD-R and stayed up all night to watch it install and compile on my Athlon Thunderbird PC (My parents didn't spend money much on computers and I had to make do with stuff that I saved for with birthday money). I fell asleep on a bean bag and woke up finding that it failed to compile something. I had to resort to asking the main IRC channel and message board to help me fix it, but I didn't have time :) I was disappointed as a 14 year old. I then downloaded Slackware and printed off the installation guide at school. I followed it to the T and it worked. It was fun and awesome because it allowed me to understand how things worked under the hood and provided insights on how a linux system hung together. Those days in the 00s are gone but the memories are still there.