Just to throw 2pennies in too

1. IMHO, nice that one can use the Command Line Interface (CLI) so easily in Slack!
This CLI feature (based w/in all Linux distros really!) is similar to DOS. Actually the Slack install and packages' updates are based upon the CLI and its 'ncurses' graphics system. Before the Windows 3.x GUI, DOS had such ncurses-like programs as EDIT.COM, DOSSHELL.EXE, and some other DOS utilities.

2. The two other very popular package-management formats are .deb and .rpm which use dpkg/apt and RPM package management commands respectively. Although Slack may not actually perform package dependency-checking as well as these two package managers, IMHO the distro maintainer Patrick Volkerding really tests out the apps on the install CDs so that they almost always work seamlessly. nadroj writes on this up above, along with his providing good Slack links about this. Vector and SLAX are some further streamlined Slack-based distros that enhance Slack.

nycace36

Woodsman, I just perused much of the Human Readable site in your sig. If that is your site, I compliment you and thank you for providing it. It is an extremely well-organized and well-written resource that I will enjoy exploring in greater depth.

I've run a lot of different distros, but, I always come back to Slackware. Slackware by default runs very fast and lean. You will need to learn how to set some basic config files. You will learn a lot with Slackware.

This thread has been a great eye-opener and help when installing Slackware. Although I preferred to use cfdisk (you might know this from old Windows installations). You can switch hotplug on later if you want to have a digital camera on USB without any problems.

There are many guides on how to partition correctly. For a start I'd suggest this more general approach: give swap 1 GB, / 5GB and /home whatever is left. You see, even if you install a lot of (big) applications, many libraries will be shared, as opposed to isolated Windows way of keeping duplicates all over the place. This is more space efficient and keeps the / partition (or more specifically /usr/local) small. When finished, install your stuff in /usr/local and put text, video, audio and other personal stuff in /home. This is the way most people do it, afaik.

Then comes actual configuration, tweaking and so on, but trust me, it's mostly really simple, if you have fairly standard hardware and aren't scared of using that keyboard
Consider this for example: to connect through my DSL modem, all I had to type was adslconf, provide a few bits of information, sit back, wait a minute and minutes later I could type adsl-start and was online!
Compare that to Windows: had to get the providers CD, feed it to the computer, navigate through a ridiculous amount of menus (ticking off a load of rubbish I never needed) and then having to deal with 2-3 failed logins...
Many times things in Windows actually more tedious to configure by a long run. All you need to know most of the time are a few simple few commands (e.g. alsaconf for sound) and apply a bit of common sense.

After you're online and have configured it to your needs, take a look at linuxcommand.org. This is what really helped me a lot. When done, try the vimtutor (this is just as simple as the aforementioned guide).

Then have a look at how to install packages (mostly you download a package from this place and type installpkg packagename). When familiar with that, get to know how to compile packages from source (usually done by typing ./configure && make && make install.

Now put your installing skills to good use and try some of the best applications that are around. Many of them will already be included in the standard installation of Slackware.

Yes, that is my site. Thank you for your kind comments.