Greetings and Hallucinations from an old UNIX hack

I'm an old hand on factory built UNIX & UNIX like OSs from SVR4 to SCO, SunSoft, OS9, Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, DG-UX, all text based, but new to rolling my own Linux. Most of my experience is well over a decade old. I've gone with Slackware as it is billed as the most UNIX like and trying Mint because it is billed as the easiest.

I've found great info here on LQ as most of my questions are common "what size..." or "which option..."

Thanks in advance for all of the questions that have been already answered.