ok so this is my next project, i have a PC with a m-audio delta 1010 and 2 GB of RAM. i want to set up an installation where ALL i would do is run ardour for recording. i have selected slackware for this because it gives you a very basic system. have i selected slackware for a right reason? any advice for me, i am currently downloading install disc 1 and 2, basically i want to have a system with:

ardour
jack
libraw
rt-kernel
x window system
gtk2

You can find buildscripts for Ardour, Jack and a lot of other stuff at www.slackbuilds.org. I don't know exactly how to strip your Slackware-install to just what's needed for Ardour, but www.slackwiki.org has a tutorial on a minimal install. You could also just install everything, and then start stripping it.
I think you should recompile your kernel to get a lower latency. Visit http://alien.slackbook.org ; Alien Bob has an item about (re)configuring the stock kernels. For a rt-kernel that'll give you VERY low latency you'll need the rt-patch. http://lau.linuxaudio.org and http://tapas.affenbande.org/wordpress/ have a few tutorials on how to do that. To have a rt-kernel really working well on a Slackware-system you should also read the stuff at www.akjmusic.com/linuxaudio.html
Hope this helps you on the way.

Unless you want to run as root, you NEED an rt kernel to run Jack.

I have in the past used a Slackware based DAW, but it was a lot of work.

Try searching google for slackware multimedia packages, i found an excellent site with hundreds of packages, and lots of obscure library packages as well

I use Ardour as a DAW with 12.1. The build used to be difficult but I found the packages from the Slakcy site
http://www.slacky.eu/ to be quite complete. I just used Gslapt and it added the dependencies and installed correctly. Which was quite a surprise considering in the past it was a little annoying tracking down all the libraries.
As an aside Slack is a good choice for a DAW, as I ran side by side comparisons with Ubuntu Studio and JackLab (OpenSuse) and an Ardour/DAW Slack on identical build boxes. I then ran the same dance beat 12 track mix through them and checked which one started degrading first upon identical mods of the tracks. Slackware came out first in being to handle the tracks properly, accurately and under the heaviest load. I also used Ardour with OS X (Tiger) on a similar spec'd Mac Mini in the test, it came in last by a long shot.