> Those dark, dark hours/days/weeks with Xorg really made me into the hacker I am today. If the forums weren't there, read the docs, if the docs weren't helpful you could read the source. Not being stonewalled while discovering how to work with one's computer is a wonderful experience.

Same thing here. I distinctly recall having a stack of different linux distros that I would install and switch between, then spend hours configuring the os, tweaking xorg, etc.