So I was advised on the forum to go to slackware because of a somewhat older system I have. My question now is, does a package downloaded also download the dependencies with the package manager? I haven't tried this yet because Slackware is still installing but Im curious because I heard that Slackware won't download or install dependencies. Thank!

What package manager first of all?
The basic one will not, you can see what it needs by running the program from a console (or xterm if it's an X program)

Many packages (Slackware *.tgz) programs, will tell you if they have dependencies. It is up to you to make sure you have them.

However, with that being said, you will find out that there are very few 'dependency hell' issues with Slackware, if you do a full install.

Why is that? If you do a full install (especially as a newbie), most programs that a program needs are already installed and waiting. Wait until you try compiling your own programs from source. I think you will be very happy. Slackware just 'works'

****Note: There are exceptions to everything. Sometimes, dependencies will get you.

Slackware does not have automatic dependency checking, but as cwwilson mentioned, if you do a full install, it's highly unlikely that you'd have any dependency issues. Looking forward, if you plan on installing new packages that are not part of the stock Slack install, I'd recommend going to LinuxPackages which typically will list the any important dependencies. Additionally, if you use an app like KPackage, you can do a "test install" which walks through the installation process without actually installing anything. If there are any error conditions, they'd be revealed.

Overall though, dependency issues in Slack are a relatively minor issue. Good luck with it

As already said, no dependency checking. Don't let that scare you off, it's actually a good thing as you don't run into dependency hell where some package is looking for a dependency in one place when it's actually on your system, just in a different place.

I have yet to run into a dependency problem in Slack that wasn't easily resolved far more quickly than trying to fight with some RPM dependency issues I've seen.

Due to minimum disk space, I had a minimal install of Slack installed on my server (which now houses HLFS) For me, the "search by file name" feature on the Slackware Packages Site was a godsend. Any time I had an error that reported a "file not found", I just copied and pasted the name of that file into the search and got back the name of the package I needed. Download, install, done.

regards,
...drkstr

Yeah, that has saved me many times as well.