i wouldnt say slackware is like buying a car with no seats, if anything its more like buying a volvo, maybe not as flashy as some of the other cars on the road but its built like a tank, and does everything you need it to. slackware can seem a bit difficult to new users, especialy windows users who have been trained to fear the comand promt, but the little extra time it takes to learn is well worth it for the amount of control you can have over your system.

No, Slackware doesn't have any kind of automation of stuff, and that's why most of us like it, we know what is being installed and how because we do it ourselfs. That's really "shocking" at first, but at the end, you end up knowing a lot about Linux.

But being as it is, Slackware does support Java and MP3 by default and Flash and MPEG if you download the propieraty and or alternative codecs (See FlashPlayer from Macromedia and free MPlayer codecs).

Haha Cinematography, as one of the heretics agreeing that the terminal is outdated (in this thread http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...hreadid=323231), it comes as no surprise you wouldn't like Slackware.
As everyone has said, Slackware isn't for everyone. You sound more like a Mac user than anything, since you want things to "just work", without taking the time / having the interest to learn anything about _why_ something works. If Mepis is good for you, then I'm glad you have found a distro you like so early on (as a lot of people end up distro shopping for a loooong time).

I like Slackware because the names sounds so cool. It has a nice ring to it.

I actually started using slackware because of the cool name. I'm a slacker, so I put 2 and 2 together.

It's the coolest linux distro name, don't you think?

A quote from WCC'S Jesse James sums it up for me"If it doesn't make it go faster or stop quicker, I don't want it."

I use slackware on my HOME system replacing Windows XP. I used to have XP and Slackware but Now, It's Slackware on hda1 (C and no XP

And for fun stuff: I use ePSXe to play playstation 1 games. And Cedega to play some cool games like Warcraft and even Age of Empres II conqueror's expansion, (you need to have AOC repackaged version by MYTH using Limewire or Ares or e-mule network). I bought AOC CDs, so, it's legal to download that

And there are many nice-small and numerous games in Super Nintendo using ZSNES, and gnutella is your friend to get those SMC (game files). btw, I own SuperNintendo system and those game cartidges so it is also legal to get those smc files.


Configuration is simple:

xorgsetup for X configuration
alsaconf then "alsactl store" for Sound configuration
mouseconfig for "Mouse settings"
netconfig for "network settings"
adsl-setup, adsl-start, adsl-stop for "ADSL connection"

And configuration files are not modified by the "demons " like in other distros causing much confusion and trouble.

Also I like the KISS principle. I wanna kiss Patrick V.

Slack isn't a car with no seats, it's a K-Car. You have to put it together yourself, but when you're done, you've got a Ferrari for a fraction of the cost....

I recently had to reinstall my Slack. Here is a *complete* list of packages that I needed to install that weren't included on the 10.1 disc1:
QT (on disc 2)
Firefox/Thunderbird (binary distribution/installer from Mozilla.org)
SciTE (slackpackage from linuxpackages)
cpufreqd (500kb source, ./configure && make && make install)
Acrobat Reader 7 (binary distribution from Adobe)
gtk-gnutella (linuxpackages)

And the Japanese input method, translating to:
Fonts
Anthy
Scim
Scim-anthy
(all of which I built into a package that's stored on my network file server. I'd upload it to linuxpackages, except that it's 50mb)

And the packages I wanted to install but weren't needed:
Flash Player (binary distribution from Macromedia)
adesklets (./configure && make && make install, except that I have a package I made)
assorted desklets for adesklets (unzip and run the .py)
Win32 .dll multimedia codecs for Xine (download the zip from MPlayer's website, and unzip to /usr/lib/win32... hey look! Xine plays WMV and MOV files)

That's it. That's all. From the decision to wipe the hard drive (python install got seriously borked and was unrecoverable, but that was my own fault) to a fully installed desktop was 1 hour. I knew what I was doing, and because of Slack's package system I did not find myself in dependancy-hell. Once you get used to the package system, you'll probably find that it's a whole heck of a lot easier than RPM-based distros, and in my opinion is a contender against apt-get in some ways.

I think every OS or every distribution sucks somewhere. So it depends on your desires
I think Slackware sucks less than any other distro I tried. To install OOffice or Flash plugin isn't that hard. I found it more disgusting to cannot play MP3s out of the box. And automation may be cool -- if you have the possibility to turn it off. I found it a annoying thing to edit some config files that lost the changes after the next booting up.

Slackware maybe doesn't look the simpliest distro at the first look. But it's easy to play admin with and check out and learn Linux things -- it's cool to see you learn general knowledge about Linux, not just distro A oder distro B. And have you tried to install software from source? Slack nearly never left me alone and had all necessary libraries installed out of the box. So these issues don't look fancy, but they might be a great feature if you want things like these.

You might want to read my Slackware comparison articles:

Since I hate repeating myself, I'll post the links. You might find this comparison useful to find out whether Slackware might be what you want.

A look at Slackware and Debian
More on Slackware and Debian

Clean, very clean! In all aspect.

Because it's simple. In particular:

- Compiling from source is simple because there are no -devel packages to hunt down.
- The init system is simple.
- The package system is simple.

Slackware works simply and simply works.

I love Slackware because I love the idea that my computer works or doesn't by MY merits. I am in control of every aspect, so I don't have to worry about having 10-20 processes running in the background, eating up my ram, without my having set it up that way. I enjoy having the chance to learn HOW my computer works and WHY it works that way.
I'M THE GOD! I'M THE GOD! BWA, HA HA HA HA HA!!!
Er...um, excuse me *cough* Insomnia time again, I'm afraid, sometimes it gets ahead of me. Sorry.

I like it 'cause wheel mouse works out of box.

for some reason it doesn't ever do that for me... i always have to add the "ZAxisMapping" "4 5" line on my own IIRC... BTW i use a labtec ps/2 mouse... maybe if i had a usb one the wheel would work out of the box?? nevermind, i'm drifiting off-topic, LOL...

I was just kidding win32. For some reason slackware doesn't support mouse...yet lol