During my brief Linux experience so far I have tried RH9, FC1, Knoppix and Slackware 9.1

As a newbie I choose the default options for each installation with regards to disk partitioning and kernel etc but it seems to me that Slackware is the only distro that just "works".

A small example:

I love the program Celestia. I have installed it on RH9, FC1 and Slackware, on the first two distros I had to ask a lot of questions and ./configure with lots of options to get it to work.

On Slackware it just compiled and installed fine. Also, although I use Gnome as my GUI the Slack compiled version of Celestia uses some sort of KDE window borders/menus etc without a hiccup.

I have read much about Slackware using "Vanilla kernels" and such but I don't really understand what that means.

Is it that all the other stuff in a Slackware install is somehow more carefully compiled to "play nicely" with other things that I install, and if that is true then why wouldn't other distros follow suit ?

Apologies for the rather vague post, and thanks for any links etc that help me get my head around this stuff

mark

It's may be because Slack uses Vanilla software, including the kernel. What this means is that other distros add a lot of "enhancements" to the kernels that they ship with their systems (backports from development versions, additions that their people have written, etc.). Same with a lot of the other software. Sometimes this can break things subtly in other applications.

Then again, you simply may have gotten unlucky with your other distros -- I've compiled plenty of stuff on RH etc. with no problems at all.