You think it's tough now, you should have tried before there were any distros at all. Then it was fun! Today's distros are baby stuff compared to then. Even so, Slackware would not be something for someone looking for a "Windows-like" OS. It's somewhere in between the Linux of old and modern easy distros. If you really want to learn Linux inside and out stick with Slackware or Debian. If you want an easier time of things use the latest RedHat, SuSe, Mandrake, etc.