[keithpeter]

"Speaking of patching, Slackware tries to stay as close as possible to the upstream developer's version of a package, with minimal patching."

Posting this from my Thinkpad X220 running Slackware 14.1. Just check config files (*.new suffix) when a package is updated to a newer version. Debian/CentOS backport patches to packages so that the configs don't change during a release.

Quite happy with what I've had from Slackware for the past couple of years and I have subscribed. The distribution does not pretend to cater for all needs but can support many use cases.

Remember that there is now a live iso image to try before you install.