Slackware Linux is not your ordinary Linux distribution. For starters, it rarely figures in news headlines, preferring to keep a low profile instead. Its developers have stubbornly resisted any attempts to make their users' lives easier: the distribution provides no graphical configuration utilities, it's package management does not resolve dependencies and its simple, text-mode installer has undergone very few changes in years. Yet, Slackare Linux remains one of the top 5 Linux distributions in use today. What is the reason for its tight hold on many users? Surely, in the absence of any convenient features found in other modern distributions, the only explanation is that Slackware holds supernatural powers - try it once and you will never be able to leave it again for any other product. Or is it something else?