in the user manager the option to create a user with a private group. My first thought is this would behave like the Red Hat default - wrong. What does this option do, and how do I fix it?

I don't see what iw broken - can you elaborate?

I have a new install of slack 9, I added a user httpd. I want this user to be of group httpd and other members of httpd able to write to /home/httpd. I added this user with kusermanager using the private group option which I wrongly thought would add a group httpd with the user (default behaviour in RH). Now the /home/httpd is invisable to other users and changing permissions to the directories does not change this behavior. I could delete this user and add it in with the default choice but I am really curious why it is like this, I can think of times I might want to do this on purpose or better yet turn the behavior on and off at will. Thanks for your prompt response.