To be honest, I disagree with that.My first distro was (and still is) Slackware, being not what most people call
"user-friendly". But the jump into cold water is the best way there is, IMO. Everything else, like Ubuntu etc. is a
mere waste of time since it's bloated and hiding a lot of the details. That's the reason why I linked vezzy's guide
in my previous answer. Still, it's probably possible to start learning with something like Mint / Ubuntu / whatever
popped up from systemd's lair, but in the long run, it's a loss. Feel free to disagree ^^.
I absolutely agree with you.
==========================
Well i heard many great things about Arch. But I'm Linux noob and haven't tried it yet. But few days ago I started using Slackware. So what can I say about it from noob point of view is that something similar to "train hard" like "learn hard". So I think using Arch or Slackware from the very beginning might get your brains working seriously. Cannot say anything about Arch or Gentoo (just heard that it's same level of hardcore as Slackware). But in first few days of using it I learned so much about Linux. While using Kali all i learned is to blindly copy paste commands from tutorials into terminal without thinking and sometimes screwing something up. Slackware forces you to understand wtf is going on. After I installed Slackware everything started from the very begining. Like getting internet connectivity there is not such a thing where you just plug a cable or point ant click on wireless icon, select AP enter your password and done. Nothing like that... I learned how to manually connect my box to internet trough cable or wireless. After that there was no sound so i learner to use alsamixer and aplay. Find out that alsa by default was trying to play music trough hdmi port. And this is just beginning. Less gui I use the more it feels I learn. And everything is so interesting in this way. So from my noobish point of view i suggest "learn hard" get serious and get slackware.
EDIT
And the most important thing i learned is to RTFM. I mean using man on everything. You can even read about C libraries there or search for stuff like where the fck is dhcp conf file ? 'man -k dhcp' ... Omg everything is so sexy here..
