A while ago I was asking for comments about a good programmer's distro for an older laptop.

This time I'd like to hear comments about a good embedded programmer's distro for older 3-core phenom machine.
The way I define good here:
1) Freely downloaded from the net
2) Well equipped with easily installed SW development tools (targeted to programmers, or at least not away from programmers)
3) Newish SW
4) Relatively stable
6) Common enough that you can find working packages for even a bit more exotic pieces of SW. (That might spell tgz.)
7) Handles wifi well (That'll be the only network connection - no wired possibility).
8) No upgrading every couple of months - the machine may stay powered off for months at a time depending how I find time.
9) No Unity.

One word:

Slackware

Actually if you're going embedded, you may want to look into Cross-LinuxFromScratch as well. It has several designs for embedded systems you might find interesting.

I'll look into that Cross-LinuxFromScratch.

Hm, with my "timetable" it looks like CLFS would take me months before I could get a system together and get back to my "projects".
Still, interesting option (maybe some day...).

Gentoo makes cross-compiling and embedded development exceptionally easy (building a cross compiler for a specific architecture comes down to a single command): http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/base/embedded/handbook/

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That handbook looks VERY promising. Even well worht the trouble of setting it up.
A lot of stuff for guys like me getting that much attention...
Looks like I have to at least try it!

First "test spin" with Gentoo Live DVD looks good. Maybe I'll install it and see what it's made of.

Both CLFS and Gentoo look awesome to me.

Slackware, loads of stuff for programming in a full install + crosstool-ng for your embedded work.

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I'm trying to make Slacware 14.1 to work on a laptop.
Wifi seems to have problems and so does qemu.
I've been wrestling with the problems about 2 weeks now.

Other than those, looks fine, but "evaluation" is still not yet begun.

Some people have more luck with Network Manager than wicd, some vice versa. When I tried wicd I had a lot of trouble either getting connected or staying connected. Network Manager has been a lot better, hardly any trouble at all.

Same here.
Although the network problem was solved: it was my ADSL/router, that said "boom" soon after my last message.
Slacware is now fine, but qemu is playing games.

I've also managed to fail first time in installing Gentoo.
I was driven to that madness by this.

I haven't got round to trying Gentoo, yet. Maybe some day.

Before you start using Gentoo for cross-compiling I strongly recommend to set up a normal system first (you will need it as buildhost anyways) and make you familiar with its package management system.
It took my several failed installs (hail to VMs) until I grasped the essential concepts.

First miserable failure behind. (Hurry doesn't help, I realized.)