My first distro was Slackware (I was a lot younger back then). Granted, my dad was holding my hand pretty much all the time, but that was back in the days when we couldn't simply google for "add user Slackware" and "start X Slackware". Looking back, I don't see a distribution that could have provided me with more structured and thorough learning experience. IMHO, the same is true for people who wish to learn GNU/Linux system today.

What you say about branding, in my mind also applies to initial configuration. It would be trivial to repackage Slackware with a post-install script that does these and other things for a user, but why? adduser is a pleasure to use, and the days of writing X configuration file by hand are long gone.

If there are questions/suggestions for the way KDE behaves by default, you should turn to the KDE development team.
They decide what the defaults are in there software. Slackware just installs the software.

@ KDE
besides doesn't KDE even warn you it start indexing files if you don't already have a .KDE directory?

Slackware should always be 'Vanilla' - it would be a good idea for a website to host custom-slack packages that could contain scripts, SlackBuild packages and theming all rolled up with one or more 'makepkg' so they could easily be 'installpkg' or 'removepkg'.

examples are:
> system-wide thunar custom-actions
> system-wide applications defaults
> fluxbox theming
> additional gtk styles/icons (shiki & shiki-colours)
> /etc/skel theming so new users auto-magically have things like .bashrc, .Xmodmap, well-known homedirs (~/Documents, ~/Downloads, ~/Pictures, ~/Projects, ~/Music, ~/Videos)

all easily maintained with a simple installpkg/removepkg.

They should only be additional scripts/packages and compatible with a full install (less [kdei] language pack's) without changing anything else in my experience.

I do this with every new slack install.

This works great with things like fluxbox theming and fluxbox menu - saves me hours (days?) doing this with any new slack version - obviously being aware of prebuilt packages and potential issues (ndiswrapper built to specific kernel as an example).

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I sure did. It was years ago (ca. 1999) and I'm still very glad I did. I'm still learning lots of things.

me too, back in march 1994.

I've read this whole thread and agree with the "vanilla" principle of Slackware.
IMHO it is an "unsaid convention" to do a full install with Slackware (like I did in most cases) only skipping the kdei-series.
But refering to KDE, I'd like to have the packages arranged in a way, that I can see which of them are necessary to get a basic KDE running.
With Gentoo I can build a package named "kdebase-meta" which results in a basic installation of KDE. I find this a very useful approach.

Markus

You should realize that Slackware has been around a while and there are many people that have gotten started with Slackware. But then reading the intent of the comment others would see that the comment was probably directed at new users in the 'now' sense and not directed at those who are pre 11.0 users. And stating that you will see that any arbitrary number stated, be it version or year, somebody will come forward stating that they got started using linux with Slackware 13.2. Not to say that 'Is there anybody" isn't a real question but an arbitrary statement to start a long rant about 4 questions that every Slacker loves to debunk even thou they were valid points that work for any other distro.

There are only so many different ways one can state "Not in my house." which is to say "Not in the house that was built for me and love to claim as mine" through some form of possession of donation or that precious amount of time spent downloading and installing.

Yes and I would only add BACK in the installer. I missed that back when I was starting with linux.

Hmm... As a matter of fact, the "Back" button in the install wizard is a great idea...
But, there is allways a "but"

You can allways step into the specified part of install wizard running once again setup script before final reboot