I am a student in the XI-th grade and I work a lot programming in C++/Java. I need a proper distribution for programming so I found it in Slackware witch I like most. But a few days ago I couldn't install KDE 3.2 from the sources distributed by the CHIP local magazine because of an error and before that I couldn't install OpenOffice 1.1 for school projects because I haven't found the sources and I can't download them because of the connection. At this moment I don't know what to do, I removed the KDE 3.1 in order to install from sources KDE 3.2 but this didn't worked... I am thinking that maybe Slackware isn't the proper distro for me but on the other hand this is the one I liked most. I don't want to make this seem as a "which is the best distro" thread but could you advise me(as a student witch work a lot programming but also need a nice desktop with powerful office tools)? I would like this to be more like advantages of using Slackware instead of something else or using something else instead of Slackware...

Thanks!

most if not all distros come w/the development packages (programming packages). mandrake 9.2 comes w/ open office 1.1 as an install option. sounds like you may just need some help installing, or possibly the proper files. i am currently running open office 1.1 on slackware 9.1. i downloaded the tar.gz package and it installed fine. if you could post the errors maybe we can get you fixed up.
good luck.

installing kde or anything big like that from source is often iffy... lots of ways to go wrong (and lots of ways to go right as well, though)

but slackware does currently offer binaries for kde3.2 at the slackware ftp's or one of its mirrors