And others distributions don't?

I'm an ex-slacker, btw. Two years of nothing but 100%, pure Slack. Now I don't have time for it, I'd rather use a distro that lets me get down to my business pretty much out-of-the-box. So it all depends on what you mean by "works" .. for me, Fedora "works" more than Slack.

Interesting observations. I find that Slackware lets me get down to business out-of-the-box. No fuss, no muss. I can have a fully configured system up and running in less than an hour.
Uh.....you're going to need to elaborate a bit on this ("Fedora "works" more than Slack"). What does that mean exactly?
Each to his own. I prefer a light-and-fast distro like Slackware or FreeBSD that is stable, rock-solid.

Nothing ground-shaking, I'm just trying to point out (or, actually, remind) that different distros "work" well for different people with different needs. And just making sure a newbie to the Linux world doesn't read b0uncer's post and get the image of Slackware being the only working distro out there

A newbie to Slackware Linux here at LQ will be encouraged to first read the extensive documentation, how tos that are available to them before they attempt an installation. Slackware isn't for everyone.
Slackware is the best distro for me.
Fedora is an excellent distro. I ran RH 9 years ago.

And still most of them just go ahead and install because of their "too-long-didn't-read" attitude, keeping in mind only the "Slackware works" line. There have been quite a few "Help, I installed Slackware Linux and all I see is a "darkstar login:" message, all the screen is black, how do I fix this, what went wrong?" threads on LQ (..well, I recall a mind-blowing number of three).

Drifting a bit off-topic, aren't we? My last post in this thread, unless some nice discussion pops up (I just don't want to trash this thread with old, well-known arguments concerning the, uhm, relativity of usability).

Agreed. For me PV's logical design of Slackware satisfies all of my needs.
System administration is easily done by using a text editor and a root shell prompt. Nothing is hidden from the user in Slackware. I also greatly appreciate how easy it is to customize an installation to meet your individual needs. Durability, stability, and security are hallmarks of Slackware.
Slackware users are independent souls who enjoy getting under the hood.

I use Slack 12.0 and Suse 10.3, both on an Intel Dual Core 64 bits system, on separate hd's. I started with Suse (around 1996), and since 2 years I have Slack 12.0 installed just for to learn more about Linux.

With Slack you have to go deeper inside the system before you have a smoothly system with some eye-candy (like a boot splash with progress bar, wireless internet, nvidia 3d opengl working, etc...)
Compiling a kernel on Suse is almost asking for some trouble, but on Slack it's quite easy (not the first time, of course )
Now I have a kernel running that's quite small and fast! (certainly for a 32 bits system!)
When I boot Slack from a relative slow ide-device, or Suse (64 bits) from a sata-disk then Slack is almost 2 times faster

I use Suse more because it gives more convenience in daily use for me, but I am using Slack more and more... (I think, because I have an almost perfect fine-tuned system running with Slack, and... it's clear)
But I can understand people that just want a direct-working system, with desktop, eye candy etc... and don't have the time or interest for building their own system (what you do with Slack).

I hope that someday Slack will come with a 64 bits version, because I think it will be super-fast...!