I too ran Slackware in the Way Back When days, and I think it's simplicity helped admins to understand how Linux works, on a more general scale, than user-frien

I too ran Slackware in the Way Back When days, and I think it's simplicity helped admins to understand how Linux works, on a more general scale, than user-friendlier distros nowadays might not. There's a time and a place for both. Simple upgrade mechanisms and scripted/UIed management tools make the OS more accessible to the less hardcore Linux enthusiast; but these benefits come at a price - larger distros, somewhat higher system requirements, some abstraction between what the user wants the system to do and what the system actually needs in order to do it. I see Slackware used now in very small embedded Linux systems in a few places, and I think I would be hard pressed to come up with a better choice of distro for a limited resource environment (no distro wars argument here, I know there are others that'd fit, I just my opinion from using it).