I have been reluctant to recommend slackware as an introductory distro to my Windows friends, however Salix could fit the bill. I tried many slackware spinoffs before becoming confident enough to use pure slackware. Each distro IMHO makes the system more difficult in their attempt to do the opposite with their custom gui configuration scripts. My favourites were wolvix and Vector. Salix appears to be an unadulterated remastered slackware iso with Gslapt used instead of slackpkg, and conveniently trimmed down to fit on one CD. I installed the xfce base system, and it works very well, but why wouldn't it? it is slackware. Good customization, good repository and user friendly package system.

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