Coming from CentOS distro that used UUIDs for fstab, I looked into fstab in slackware and noticed no UUIDs and simply /dev/sda , are there any drawbacks to this? I never saw the purpose for UUIDs myself, to me it makes more of a pain as if I swap out the main drive (like recovering from a backup or something, i never do this though) I need to use Livecd or something else to get the UUID first or else the system wont boot...idk if that is true that is just what I see.

I always use UUIDs as they solve several problems...

They make the fstab mounts and lilo boot references independent of drive ordering which solves most problems that arise from adding or removing drives from the system and booting with USB thumb drives plugged in.

So on a fresh Slackware install a first order of config business for me is to change lilo and fstab to equivalent UUIDs.

The /dev/sdx identifiers are are assigned by the booting kernel and are not always the same across different boots. UUIDs are persistent.

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Adding or removing a SCSI disk changes the disk device name but not the filesystem volume label nor its UUID.

So for a removable device like e.g. an USB drive if you use a device name like /dev/sdb1 for / (the root partition) and that next time it is named /dev/sdc1 instead, the root file system won't be mounted so your system will not start.

Naming the root partition by label or by UUID avoids that.

PS astrogeek was faster.

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UUIDs solve a lot of problems, but not all - even create some.
If you image a partition for backup and want to mount it to recover some file(s), you can't.
If you dual boot Linux's, you'll often find the latter installer(s) run a mkswap - changes the UUID. I always have swap as device name in fstab, as this is something I see all the time.

Or - you could use a combination - I have a couple of laptops & I let the original slackware install create the fstab.

I also have a 3TB Western Digital USB Drive that I pass between them for backup purposes. Then because I got a good deal on them and they fit easily in the laptop cases, each laptop has its own personal 2TB USB Drive (one Western Digital, one Seagate), in case I feel in a Belt & Suspenders mood while travelling. So, both laptops have 6 fstab entries included, in case I want to simply get some files off a USB Drive. (both laptops dual-boot to W7, so I've partitioned each USB Drive to have an ext4 and an ntfs partition. All the USB fstab entries use UUID.

I stopped using devices (except md devices, which do their own recognition) and uuid (which solve more issues than they create) in favor of labels.

I come from a DR and data security background, and there are significant advantages to using a label that you set and control. The uuid can change, or you can replicate and replace the device, but if the label is correct and the format matches, it just works.

I believe I have mentioned before, I really like 'just works'. A lot!

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There's an in-depth explanation in Brian Ward's excellent book "How Linux Works" (No Starch Press). Check out chapter 4, disks and filesystems.

Totally agree with what has been said already.
My main use of UUID (or label) is for external drives if they are to be used regularly.