I'm currently using Suse 10.0 and like it, however, i would like a distro thats more customizable. I tryed debian but once i get it installed it never starts up, i'm thinking of trying slackware. Should I?

I went from redhat (untill fedora), to slackware, to gentoo. I left slack for the sole reason of customization. You may want to try gentoo, but it is a pain in the butt until you get the 'gentoo-mindset' down. The gentoo doc is really good now and should make it much easier. Other than that, try a linux from scratch. If nothing else, you gain a lot of knowledge just attempting one of those two. When I moved to gentoo, I failed and went back to slack before trying it aain and succeeding with gentoo. Now to the Pros/Cons

SLACKWARE
PROs
110% stable. The only rival in the 'stability' competition might be debian. Those are the only two that I could throw anything at and they just don't crash.
It has good documentation via The Slackbook
It is lightweight.
Closest to unix.
Has been around a long time. Some call it the first linux distro, but that is more for a history buff to confirm.

CONs
Usually stays 1 step behind the latest and greatest features in order to maintain stability. This is only a CON if you need latest and greatest features, otherwise it could be a PRO.
People always said it was a hard distro to use. I don't agree cause I found it very easy.

PRO: the greatest name for a distro ever
CON: musicman_ace said it (I don't really consider this a con because I will take stability anyday over the latest KDE or whatever enhancement, but if I had to find a con thats it)

Pros :
- BSD init scripts syle in /etc/rc.d (very easy to customize, a few files)
- Standard, all HowTo work with Slackware, each software is at its right place
- Use vanillia Kernels, you are free to apply any patch on them
- No GUI use for administration (yes it is pro for me )
- One of the first distribution that was compatible with 2.6 kernels
(module init tools upgraded for example)
- The package managment in /var/log/packages, accessible with cd, ls and grep
- Patrick Volkerding's legendary kindness
- The average constancy between each release

Cons :
- nothing to me

Slackware is a nice base to start with when looking to custom out your ride...err.. distro.

I see slackware as more of a core OS to which you can build up around. Dropline, or freerock do great Gnome desktops to install on top of the core Slackware system... and since you have to config everything from it's default (and default by developers) settings, you really end up with a custom system.

Unlike SuSE, and don't get me wrong I like SuSE 10 a lot, because slack sticks to the KISS ideals... it is less likely to break when you are altering the system.

Give Slackware a shot, at least if you try it you'll know first hand.

You know what they say.

"Once you go Slack, you'll never go back"

!!

I've found Slack to be the single most customisable distro there is.

It completely stays out of your way and lets you do whatever you choose, which isn't even true of Debian.

Hi
I agree with musicman completely.

Started with redhat in 1998, shortly after sampled Slackware and fell in love. Have sampled other distro's on and off ever since but just ended up frustrated with them. I felt that i was never in touch with anything given the ever increasing number of gui's and wizards for doing this that or the other. Yes i need not have used them but you get lured in and then when things didn't work where do you begin.

I just love the DIY approach to Slack, any problems now and I have usually created them. Although Slack is so stable that I've never had a major issue yet.

Slack wasn't the first distro, but it is the oldest supported distro.

Just to throw in, slackware may not get the newest KDE the day it comes out but 1 or 2 weeks later and it's in the current repository ready for download. That's pretty good to me.

Absolutely. I use both distros and in a lot of ways Slack is easier than SuSe. For me the Slack way makes sense.
For example I understand Slack's fstab. The fstab in Suse scares me.
I've also found the user community to be friendly/helpful/knowledgeable.

edit
CON: Your user name will cause confusion

PRO -- "If you want to learn about <distro>, then use <distro>. If you want to learn Linux, use Slackware"
CON -- Even at v10.2, you still need to manually edit xorg.conf to get the scroll wheel to work. [/gripe]

Slackware was the first linux I installed and I found it dead simple.
I loved it directly and formatted windows

But after a while I formatted slackware to try out debian for apt, and I still use debian.
I installed arch linux a while ago and have it running on one of my machines. I like it's KISS philosophy a lot. The rc.conf is way better then debian's conf files I thought. I noticed recently when installing slack 9.1 on an old 486 that it's about the same config style in slack (I was quite a linux noob when I used slack for 2 months) . So I'm wondering if I should try the newest slack on a fast machine.

But, now to finally come to my question, how good is swaret or slapt-get right now?

Is it working good like apt or pacman?

Otherwhise I think that's the biggest con for slack.

For anyone who wants to try slack, I think you shouldn't fear installing it. It's easy, I still think it has the best installer I ever used. (Mind you that I never bothered trying anything but slackware, debian, arch, freebsd, gentoo, vector linux, damn small linux)

grtz

I never tried slapt-get, but swaret works very well. As stated, the latest release take a few weeks to make it to the repositories but otherwise I consider swaret just as good as other distro update tools.

I started using Linux around 4 years or so ago with Mandrake, went through several releases, but for I never really warmed to it. I then went to suse 9.3 and eventually upgraded to 10.0, on an old laptop and a relatively new box I built. I have been pleased with suse, but had heard a lot of good things about slackware so I bought 10.2 and about a week ago started working with it on the laptop first. I had a few problems and went through several re-installs, not because the fault of slackware but due to some mistakes I made. I now have everything working on the laptop, power controls, lan, wireless, pcmcia modem, usb stick mounting, sound, dual mice, etc. I am still tinkering with it but I can honestly say that I learned more Linux working with slackware than I did with the other distros I tried. I also know that the laptop runs much faster with slack than it ever did with suse. So from my point of view the positives are the configurability and stability. The cons- to me there aren't any.