>>106648513 (OP)
slackware brings you to a house.
all furniture included by default.
you get the deed and its now up to you to maintain it.
the tools for maintaining and keeping up to date are included.
2 phone numbers for local general stores (package repos) are given.
if you want to get more stuff, you're on your own to figure out how.
slackware was conceived when internet speeds were at a premium so naturally, the most common sense thing was to bundle the whole repository on the installation medium.
the advantage of this even today is that it is feature full distro with all the bells and whistles you may need by default.
this means you are mostly ready to go ahead and compile and install additional software since so many of the dependencies are already installed.
if slackware stable is too old, you can also run slackware current which is the testing branch of slackware. the same warnings apply here as on any other rolling release setup.
the package manager has mostly one job:
keep the system in line with the distribution.
by default, any removed packages will be automatically reinstalled during a system update.
assuming you use slackpkgplus you need to use the blacklist or the greylist to avoid reinstalling those packages.
packages are split up in categories and whole categories can be blacklisted, greylisted, installed or removed in a go.
there are other repositories and there is a build system called slackbuilds.
a tool to interface with it is sbopkg or sbotools depending on preference.
there are more than 9000 slackbuilds.
all in all, despite being old as fuck and not nearly as popular as it once was, slackware still manages to stay up to date, especially if running slackware current.
like all distros, it has its share of quirks but they feel more like linux quirks.
you don't see the distribution much at all. you barely notice it's there.
