Currently my second favorite distro behind Arch..

brief history..

1999 - Slackware Loved compiling everything and troubleshooting

2004 - Fedora 2 - Blown away when I saw how easy it was to install packages via RPM

2007 - Debian (Sarge?) - Blown away when I used apt* for the first time and dependencies just auto magically installed

2011 - Linux Mint - Looked like *buntu without the extra cruft.

2012/13 - Arch - reminds me of my Slack days where less magic happening under the hood but with great package management tools.