Gday mate. You speak of Slackware, and the Slackers will come running, lol.
Here's my two cents mate.
When i was first starting Gnu/Linux, Slackware was my second distribution, after Ubuntu, which i'd only used for maybe a week. If it wasn't for Slackware, i probably would be using Windows or OsX today. Here's a fact that guyonearth is talking from.
Many Linux distributions are labeled 'newbie friendly'. These are the Linux distributions that try to make Linux as comfortable as possible for people moving from Windows. Comfort is created though familiarity, so comfort is created by making Gnu/Linux very similar in some respect to Windows. GUI stands for 'Graphical User Interface'. Many Gui tools are installed by default in these 'newbie friendly' distros such as; Yast, Synaptic, MCC, and ect. These tools can be removed and the same task they fulfilled can still be accomplished through the command line. Ultimately, most Windows users never use the command line, so these 'newbie friendly' distros try to hide it as much as possible too.
Because of this trait, some people would go as far as to say, "Linux is trying to be another version of Windows". No matter how much truth you think is in that Statement, Slackware does not! This is why Slackware is if not one of, then the best distro there is. Slackware knows exactly what it is and it stays like it.
What is Slackware?
'Slackware is a Unix like operating system based on Gnu and Linux: nothing else. Anything else is up to the user to implement onto there system.'
I recommend Slackware to at least be given a go. It is not as hard as it's reputation suggest, just a little different, but that's just the Unix way.
Here's a podcast i highly recommend to new Slackers.
http://archive.org/details/lrpse001
That's 'Special episode 1, Slackware' of the 'Linux Reality' podcast. It's a great podcast by fellow Slacker, and contributor to the popular Slackware program Sbopkg; Chess Griffin.
I listened to that podcast when i first tried Slackware out and it was very very helpful.

Good luck mate, i hope i've been helpful.

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This post about slack being for advanced user inspired me so much that, I just had to get a working slack system. So I downloaded the newest slack dvd & installed it in VB today.
After creating partitions with cfdisk, I made a few mistakes of clicking buttons too fast after activating swap, kept selecting /boot partition & making it / by accident.
/boot partition was an unecessary step especially with such a small disk, but, created it anyway.
Even then my vdi was too small so it filled up & had to start the process over about 4 times, but now I'm to the point of updating all my packages.

After installing startx failed, so created xorg.conf file & disabled compsite,which worked in get desktop working.
Wasn't getting vi to work(operator error) so used nano to edit mirrors & updating everything now.Next I need to get VB guest-additions & get used to kde.
All in all it is a little harder to install than debian but a novice like myself can install it, unlike the archlinux system I was trying to install. Archlinux is definately for the advanced user.

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Hey mate, You're not limited to kde. Kde is only one of the GUI environments that come with Slackware. If you boot into run level 4, you can change it at kdm; but if you boot into run level 3, you can change it with the command, 'xwmconfig'.

Good luck.

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I've actually used Linux for a long time and I don't know much. I'm ready to learn Slackware and learn linux a lot more. I know that by using slackware alone I can learn a lot more than any other distro, but I like using multiple flavors. I have my favorites until one day I create my own out of LFS. My dream is my own Linux distro, but that will be a while. I need to know the basics first and slackware will help me learn it all faster if I try hard enough.

Thanks I thought I also saw it installing xfce.
I'm going to checkout the different DE's when I setup a real system on my main machine. Right now just trying it out in VB.

If it helps when you install you can select newbie install which lists & describes the packages & functions as you install. Takes a while this ay though.
I started out doing it that way until disk filled up, then after resizing disk decided to just let it do a full install, in other words everything including kitchen sink.

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slckware recently also has desktop environmet, and it has not that advanced package management tool .You cannot feel that simplity until you have mastered some basic skills like script(bash), etc.

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Next time you could try "VBoxManager internalcommands createrawvmdk" to create and use .VMDK files for mapping with real partitions instead though that's not really necessary, unless you actually had a real working Linux system on top of real hardware and just want to emulate it inside another system, or if you just want to set it up from a virtual system but run it from a real boot afterwards. It's pretty dangerous as well
Have you tried Gentoo? My systems are also just newly installed. Lately I had planned to try installing many distros. The first distro that I chose to install was my favorite Gentoo and up until now I'm still happy with it and still doing some play arounds. I was also planning to install Arch but I think it would be delayed. I hope I could try it sooner though. The last time I tried to install it, back in 2005, my hard drive broke. Since then I was no longer able to try Arch at all. I just sticked to Gentoo and Slack. Still I remained curious on how Arch could give a different Linux experience compared to Gentoo.

Before building my packages in Gentoo I also tried Ubuntu and ZorinOS. Both didn't boot my machine. It was a common boot error for some special hardwares and I saw some posts were other users also complained about it. ZorinOS is based from Ubuntu so perhaps they had the same sources.

I already have the installer images of Debian, Arch, and Mint in all flavors but they already have to wait. Who knows maybe it would be next Slackware release again that I would install first.

All of these is because I kept myself updated from the new packages being announced in DistroWatch. Sometimes you just had to stay away from it. It's really tempting

Btw, I also thought about the possibility that they could be installed throught VirtualBox but the only host system I had was 32bit and I'm wanting to have 64bit installs so I thought about just not considering it anyway. Since I now have Gentoo, I guess I could already do that next time, but perhaps only for those that doesn't boot directly from the hardware.

On my side as well, I'd choose a lighter DE (probaly always XFCE) when running a Linux system in a virtual environment.

There are lighter options but I agree it's the best choice for a new Slackware user checking Slackware in VM. Xfce provides a good balance between being lightweight and out-of-the-box functionality.

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Yes never got a working system, made it as far as emerge.
Haven't gotten a working archlinux either, got to mkinitrd & stopped.

What happened to OP?
Seems to only start a thread & move on to another.

Well it seems that even archlinx isn't that difficult to setup either.

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Slackware's only suited to people who are willing to learn a little more about the understanding of the system IMO fedora and Ubuntu are more geared towards the users who really don't care that much for HOW it works, they are more like "What is linux & I just want a little taste of it" its like the windows users who dont have a clue what is the difference between .com .exe .dll files they just know it is a file which is why so many people were infected with the lovebug virus a few years back! if they had known the difference they would have noticed off the bat that the file was not a .txt file but a .vbs file (ie executable code).

Short version: if you want to know linux like the back of your hands Slackware is (one of) the better choices BUT you have ALOT of reading and research to do! if you just want to use linux with minimum configuration headache Ubuntu or Fedora!