It's funny how most comments here are on the line of "Slackware was my first distro, I have a soft spot due to the memories, but now I moved on to $MODERNDISTRO

It's funny how most comments here are on the line of "Slackware was my first distro, I have a soft spot due to the memories, but now I moved on to $MODERNDISTRO...". My case was the exact opposite. My Linux journey started in May 2000 with Red Hat 6.2 (a Deluxe boxed edition). I then upgraded Red Hat up to 7.2, and then went to Mandrake, from 8.2 and up to 9.2. Then, a special version of dependency hell that was the Mandrake 9.2 framebuffer console forced me to switch to Slackware, which I was already using for experimenting. This Register article hits it in the nail; Slackware might look primitive but it's in fact quite advanced. It's my regular desktop driver, working as a lawyer, translator and university lecturer. There are many things who are automatically detected and configured, and whatever stuff you had to configure by hand, it lives on legendarily over and over. I had to configure stuff by hand, yes; but I have configs from those early days almost 20 years ago which still are there, unmodified. They just keep working. So, if you would like a reasonably stable, fast, modern and simple Linux system, and you are not afraid of using a text editor, then you should give Slackware a try.