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I don't call it education/experience and most of my instructors through both grade school and beyond consider it memorization of steps, not education as to what is actually going on with said steps. There is a definite difference between memorizing a step and understanding what is being done and why it is being done. This is why I point to LFS as a valuable educational tool, though any distro has educational value if someone wants to learn with it. Some are more educational than others merely because of the steps involved in getting things up and running (Provided those steps aren't distribution-specific). I don't know if you really appreciated what my comment was saying though with regards to substituting Gentoo and a few other points into his statement instead of Slackware. I was illustrating the inaccuracies of the statement and how silly it is and the ease of which it can be turned around. Gentoo-folk are not as a rule people who run a distro just to be cool, just as Slackware users are not as a rule more seasoned people eager to help beginners and to learn something.



There really is no persecution going on of other distros, with loads of people piling on the "Be more Ubuntu-like!" mentality. Distributions exist to please a certain base of users, and I really don't think it's in any distributions best interest to simply mimic another as best it can. Your sentence where you state "use something appropriate" implies that there are distros that are tailored for "lazy bum"s who "don't get it" which is an elitist attitude that only serves to discourage anyone from getting interested and involved in F/OSS, specifically Linux. Ubuntu is easier to pick up and run with compared to Gentoo or Slackware, but that does not mean that people who choose Ubuntu are "lazy bum"s who "don't get it." See what I'm saying?



I don't think anyone was saying there is a magical all-in-one distro. I also don't think it's fair to call Ubuntu a beginner distro that pros need not look into because there's absolutely nothing stopping a long-time advanced user from getting the most out of an Ubuntu setup if that person finds it just works best for him. The distros that are "for pros" in your eyes are distros that most would consider are for niche markets or specialized purposes, such as security-testing distros or Arch or Gentoo which allow for a high degree of customization. I don't see why some people insist that technical users as a rule cannot or should not use what they find works best for them, and anyone who would mock me as an inexperienced user for choosing at times to use Ubuntu would be ignorant to the fact that I am comfortable in a wide range of distros performing a wide range of tasks.

In short, the only bashing of distros and users I see going on in this discussion is by people who would equate "Slackware user" with "enlightened one".