I may be fall just right about from the sky, but why?

stability, simplicity, stability, speed, stability, flexibility, stability, control, stability

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Well, when I once started with Linux I looked around and there was only Slackware available. Debian was founded some month later.
And once you slack you'll always come back.

Markus

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Here's why, in no particular order.

1. Perennity. Slackware is the oldest surviving Linux distribution (not counting SLS), and it looks like it's here to last. In France we have a famous Nutella advertising. "Twenty years of experience make all the difference." The same thing applies to Slackware.
2. Perennity (cont'd). The Slackware installer and the administration tools remain the same proven tools that have been shipping over the years. So as a system administrator, I don't have to go back to the start every time a distribution decides to change the init system and implements someting completely new. Changes to the distribution only happen in small incremental steps, like the addition of slackpkg for example.
3. Stability. Only proven and tested software gets added to a release. So I'm sure I'll never find any half-baked "technology previews" as it sometimes happens with openSUSE or Fedora. Only reliable tools that I can work with.
4. Flexibility. I have a pretty good idea what I want on a LAN server, on a dedicated web server and on a desktop. No canned distribution ships these configurations out of the box, but Slackware is about the only distribution that doesn't make me jump through burning loops to simply do what I want to do.
5. Flexibility (cont'd). If a package is not included in the distribution, I can be either 99 % sure SlackBuilds.org has a script for it, otherwise I'll just write a SlackBuild myself. Until now, I have about 150 addon packages for 14.0, and everything built just fine.
6. Simplicity. I often install desktops on old and/or exotic hardware, and Slackware lets me configure the more problematic stuff where the usual suspects among the installers just choke on it. Plus, I'm a fan of the KISS principle, and you won't find any "DO NOT EDIT THIS BY HAND" nonsense in Slackware.
7. Humanity. I know, this is a word the Ubuntu folks claim for themselves, but what I like about Slackware is its human size. Small distro, not too many packages, but carefully tendered. Folks at LQ are generally a competent and rather nice crowd, and I like the tone. Plus, the average Slackware user doesn't have the "GNU/Linux taliban touch" to it, which you see all too often in France.
8. Transparency. This one's obvious, but one less obvious factor is that it makes Slackware great for learning Linux. I'm currently teaching a class of ten Windows sysadmins for the move to Linux, and they're just about beginning to see why we chose Slackware for the course.
9. Efficiency. My Xfce-desktop runs great on ten year old hardware, and that's something I could only achieve with Debian and a handful of other distros, but not with the mainstream stuff like Ubuntu or openSUSE.
10. Last but not least: I think Slackware is cool.

Hope that helped.

4 members found this post helpful.

It gives you a very well tested default install and makes it as easy as possible to change it.

*shrug* Why not?

The question is not why but why not.

Slackware is like coffee or beer. Not sugar-sweet like candy, but once you get used to the taste, you start to like it.

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Because of all the distros I tried this is the one that makes the most sense to me and fits my needs best.

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...+1...

An excellent comparison!

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I used SuSE/openSUSE since 2000. I used Mandrake for 6 months before that, then one day 6 or 7 months ago I simply wanted to try something different. I started out with a dual-boot and within a couple of weeks I overwrote the whole hdd and have been using Slackware exclusively, ever since.

Once you get past the small learning curve for the package tool and building packages (which is quite a bit simpler than any rpm based system, I can say that!), it's the most stable, easiest to use system I've used, and like an earlier poster said, if an program isn't on slackbuilds.org, build it yourself. I'm no programmer, zero training or schooling in it, but most times I can get by by looking at other programs and doing similar things with the one I want to make a build for and if I can't, I ask for a little help on here or the slackware mailing list and in no time I've got a slackbuild of the app I'm wanting.

Like others have said, it's steady, stable, easy to use, doesn't change in major ways every version like most of the 'big name' distro's, and it *does* teach you about Linux much more than most of those other distro's too.

because it's the only distro managed by a grateful dead taper

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As someone said, why not ? But here is an article from last year from the techrepublic answering the same question

John