Great answer.

Starting with Suse in 2003, I found things by then already easy enough, and have not noticed any significant change in ease since. I think the hype of how much easier linux has gotten to install and use, is overblown (in significant part thanks to Ubuntu's marketing claims). But then, depends which distros, like you say with "A lot of distros used to be a lot harder.".

Back in the day, and for an absurdly long time, Debian was one of the hardest distros to install, solely because they buried the ISO download links so deep in a confounding byzantine labyrinth trail of links through their website, it felt more like luck if you managed to find it to download. LOL.

Oh! Best answer yet! I forgot that's a thing.

Exherbo's fresh on my mind, so it springs to mind first.

But I doubt it's the hardest.

Could perceive GuixSD as harder (~ I swear, even as a bedrocklinux user (with it's longer file paths and other complexities and extra concepts to grok), I'll never get used to the GuixSD/NixOS confounding noisy style of file paths, with those fat hashes in the middle).

And if what's harder, is changes to the file system, different to the conventional norms, then maybe GoboLinux is harder. Nice as the idea is, I never managed to really daily drive Gobo for any meaningful duration. I at least managed to stick with GuixSD for months.

Distros like CRUX, and also KISS and Carbs, spring to mind. It's a different kind of hard again.

But for sure not the hardest. There will be some even more obscure distro I'm forgetting, because it was too hard.

Do distros that just failed to install for some reason, count as harder, in my experience, since they were just a hard wall blocking getting further? Because some distros I did not even figure out how to download, so they'd be even harder?

Ah, but, the question is indeed "tried", not "used".

I tried NixOS, then gave up when I realised how much had to be learned for its package management language that would not be a transferable skill learned (~ and it was then I decided to run GuixSD, and learn guile, lol, I know no guile from a few months in GuixSD years ago). Maybe that's more a case of tried to try.

And LFS's another "tried to try" (several times even). But always giving up before can really say "tried".

Joborun, might be one of the more obscure examples, that had some hardness to it, that I'd actually tried to ride along with... but that was more a (for want of a different description) a penance amidst familiar comforts. [Edit: and joborun kinda invited [/insisted] more attentiveness, so that, in a way, made it easier to be attentive enough to use something arch-based more properly (e.g. not using AUR blindly)]

I dabbled at making my own (~ respin + scripts + things + grander ambitions). That was pretty hard. Though, the hardest part, was the cat herding community aspect. Not running it.

I tried doing hardened gentoo... that hardest?

I've done decibel linux many times since around 2008 (though it was called gentoo studio back then iirc). If one were to partake of decibel without first learning at least a little gentoo... that's hard. And I only did my first stage3 gentoo install in 2010. [Edit: Oh, and last time I checked, the site was down, and couldn't get the stages from the wayback machine... so that's even harder to try decibellinux now. ~ hoping the guy's okay. ~ which reminds, XeroLinux, another distro I've tried, that's hard in a different way, emotionally, concerned for the developers wellbeing.]

And so I don't think I'm going to include bedrock as a candidate for the hardest... because by the time one arrives at a need for bedrock, one is already comfortably familiar with (likely) many distros, and the amount learned already is still more than the sizeable amount of learning new things required for bedrock, and so, like other distros [though, confoundingly, every distro example coming to mind are also each in their own way exceptions to this rule], that just take a bit of time diligently attentively learning and following the documentation, it's not hard, especially from the likely entry point.

So perhaps I just never really pushed harder... if one were to jump sooner to something harder... then it'd be harder. But the things that would seem harder to the novice, are not hard once you arrive there with the knowledge that brought you there.

Perhaps the hardest, might have been the first, simply because as a windows refugee, it was like going from 0 to 1, the initial infinite step change, where everything after that is easier.

... So wait, am I going to say SuSe is the hardest distro I've tried? lol.

Yeah. Final answer. Suse is the hardest distro I've tried. Simply because it was my first.

6%!?

I wish I had that much.

“What’s the hardest Linux distro you’ve tried?” can be interpreted many ways

So, do you mean ...

I mean for the question to be open to interpretation.

You've accused me of doing what you're doing now. I smell DARVO. Putting words in my mouth. Slow down, read a little more carefully. I did not say I do not know any of the things you've just asserted. I'm leaning towards this not just being an honest misinterpretation, and seems more like you're just seeking loosh. Bye.

Happy to tell you, I asked the question, and I stated it was open to interpretation.

And many people have done so. Fitting as intended.

If they want to say the distro they made following LFS is the hardest they've tried, they're perfectly within the remit of the question with that; perfectly on topic. If they were to proclaim their re-write from scratch of templeOS in dreamberd was their hardest Linux distro, I'm happy to accept that. If they were to state the hardest linux distro they tried, was using GNU Hurd, instead of something with a Linux kernel, I'm happy with that too. If they had an entirely non-gnu userland, and an ironclad kernel, fine with that too. If they said Windows, satirising how hard that was on their life, how ignorant and disempowered it made them, that's fine to interpret the question that broadly too. If someone said a piece of toast, with nothing to do with the linux kernel at all, then that's fine too. If someone said Norway, by whatever crazy brought them there, that's still within the remit of the question's reassurance that it's open to interpretation. See how open to interpretation works?

See how we've been arguing past each other, at different levels?

You're free to interpret LFS as not a distro. That too is within the remit of open to interpretation. I wonder why you're so insistent on only your interpretation of the question, and of that one aspect of one possible answer, and so stubborn to accept that the question itself, not merely LFS considered as a distro, is [as already stated in bold italics repeatedly] open to interpretation (and if you've even yet got that that's what's being questioned here).

(Probably not... but I thought this reply was good enough to help clarify... but then, I thought that several times already... and yet still, astonishing levels of not getting it, like taking a step back's too difficult for your current apparent catecholamine tone.)

I teach you that its not

Let me know when that starts.

You just asserted elsewhere in this thread, that it's not debatable. ... Seemed like you were already putting forth debate arguments a day ago here.

So all the other people who interpreted the question, and the word "distro" in the question, in a manner that led them to answer LFS, are not just wrong to have interpreted it so, but... I'm sorry, I'm still struggling to get my head around your world view, how this is squared away, where there's an internal logical consistency. [Edit: "no interpretation"? So what was it they all did?]

If it's not debatable, how then did we arrive here?

See... its like you're not even in reality. Reminds of NPD. Stating things as true or not true, contrary to what's immediately evident. Like your failing efforts at saving face lead you to just try double-down harder, even further removed from awareness and reality. The ignorance that dies is not you. There's no threat to you here. You can entertain an idea. It wont hurt.

You're still not getting it.

Open to interpretation.

Contemplate these words.

I don't know how to help you, since you're not getting this.

Arguably, no one does. But this is a point that seems to be going completely over your head.

[Edit: There was a (iirc) good video about that recently from some linux youtuber... that I'm failing to find... If I do encounter it again, I'll try remember to add it here.]

I think you don't understand "open to interpretation".

And you're just stating things that are plain wrong, and already evidenced to the contrary of your claims.

You have not a leg to stand on, yet keep doubling down and avoiding the questions.

I'll be sure to tell the NutyX guys that. XD

And the others. https://distrowatch.com/search.php?basedon=LFS#simple

And we'll need to tell distrowatch they're doing it wrong, and they're not allowed to to allow distros distinguish their LFS origins from independent origins.

Y'know, since you're right, and don't need to be accountable to scrutiny in what you say because you're right, and there's no such thing as interpretation, we'll just have to make everybody agree with what you restate as the one true way, ignoring any questions about it, disregarding any alternative perspectives and interpretations, ... XD

You are conflicted with what you say.

Where?

Even what you said after that seemed offer not only no conflict in what I said, also then went on to undermine your own argument! XD

But I guess if you're completely oblivious to interpretation... there's astronomically low odds of stumbling upon that.

Yeah.

I'd hoped for better. But pretty much expected that kind of a response.

Can't get there from here.

I'm not sure if this is trolling, or some kind of philosophical stumble (like some kind of naive realism ~ hence oblivious to interpretation), or even a personality malady (like NPD, impeding capacity for introspection).

To assert there's nothing to interpret... is a difficult stance to approach, having already concluded, contrary to present evidence, as if there's so clearly only one interpretation, so much obliviously so, like the fish asking "what's water?", that there's no interpretation at all...

And so, having dodged answering the question, it's difficult to know how to proceed.

Also further made difficult by you not answering the question asked about the substance of the question, but answering something entirely different. I wondered (left it open to answer, did not pose it as a direct question), how you interpreted what you just responded to...

as in

“What’s the hardest Linux distro you’ve tried?” can be interpreted many ways

I was wondering how you interpreted that line. Perchance that may lead to clarification as to what led you to simply repeat

it’s a documentation

re-asserting your position, seemed to be missing that this can be, and (evidently through the other comments) has been, interpreted many ways. So I still wonder, how did you interpret that line that restated that the question can be interpreted many ways?

As for your assertion itself, that you've double down on, as if there can be no other interpretation... Have you heard of a no-true Scotsman fallacy? The lines are blurred as to what defines a distro, even without someone offering reassurance to interpret a question about distros freely. Would you baulk similarly at various ilk of meta distros and installation scripts and other instructions? If the scripts that fetch the programs that comprise your operating system get from upstream sources, are they no longer a distro either? Where is the line for you, since you exclude LFS? And, we're all to just agree with your decree? Given thus far^, not my pope of FOSS. Heh.

If I build a car from instructions, then I have that car. ... Now you've got me hankering after a Caterham again. Heh.

I wonder also how, in your world view, distros based on LFS are assessed. Like on distrowatch, they too draw the distinction, between being Independent, and LFS based.

And still, I am very intrigued by your world view, how you square this away...

I saw the title of a vid listing from Nic Olas, asking "Is Alpine the new Arch Linux?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1b0JvPL6tSQ [yet to watch]. I'd long thought that status challenge more typically leaned to Void. Hence the question. Perhaps there are even better candidates for a "the new Arch Linux"... whatever that means. CRUX (once upon a time Arch was seen as the new CRUX... but CRUX is newer! So how could that be!?)? NixOS? Exherbo? Omarchy? LOL, depends how one interprets it.