The biggest problem I had with debian's package manager was a brownout during an update. Since I didn't research what dependencies were being added I had great difficulty correcting the problem. With slackware I usually do them one at a time (yes I know that is slow) but helps with recovery in such cases. Found a few instances where things went awry installing using debians installer that gave un-neccessarily diffucult time repairing damaged packages because i didn't know which package installed was corrupt.

Debian does have a great package manager. But I have found that correction of potential problems have been easier in Slackware in my experience. ( But again this is only my opinion .

i must be the exception, because when i first started using linux, i tried a bunch of rpm distros, a bunch of debian distros, etc. nothing seemed quite "right," and a lot of it was overwhelming with different gui ways of doing everything, etc. then after a couple of weeks i tried slackware and suddenly everything seemed to make sense. all i had heard about was how "hard" it was for n00bs, but somehow i found it a lot simpler. you could find out easily where everything was, and then edit it how you wanted. and once you had it that way, that was it. easy. i never really cared that there wasn't a package manager per se, what's so hard about configure make make install? in most cases it went without a flaw, *unlike* the touted package managers of the other distros (*cough* rpm *cough*). slack may be considered a little "old in the tooth" when compared to a lot of more "modern" developments in configuration and package mgmt., but when you value stability it's still probably the top distro, imho (until maybe you go to the *BSDs i guess, never tried those yet).

You wouldn't be the only exception... I imagine not by a long shot.

Slackware is, in my opinion, perfectly suitable for an 'average' user, but I think a lot of people are just scared off by all the people who say that it isn't.

While I agree that Slackware may not be suitable for everyone, no distribution is and I don't think any distribution can be, I think it often gets misrepresented as an "advanced" or "expert" OS. I think with any operating system the 'Skill level' of new users is a non-issue, the important factor is the mindset of the potential user. I forget where I was going with this statement, but I'll continue anyways. An inexperienced user switching from Windows can quite easily have the correct mindset to use Slackware just as easily as a person with years of experience working intimately with multiple similar OS's and detailed knowledge regarding Linux administration could have the right mindset to want to run one of the so-called "newbie" distros like Linspire or Ubuntu.

No you are not, I did the same. It took me a couple of years to find Slack though, instead of a couple of weeks .

I've run FreeBSD. FreeBSD is worth the effort, it has a very slack-like installer (you'll feel right at home). It is something different to do if you get bored:-)