Re: Still sticking with Slackware.
Slackare and Debian are the oldest remaining linux distributions I believe and they also provide contrasting packaging/design approaches. As an end user with a laptop I find the following...
Debian has its very tightly coupled dependency resolution and metapackages. Debian packagers modify code to fit applications into the framework.Customise at your peril if you want library versions outside the repository for the release of Debian you are using, but stay within the repository and you can create very minimal (or maximal as you choose) installs that work and stay working after updates.
A recommended install for Slackware is 'everything' and it comes in at around 8gb. Very little modification of upstream code in the large 'core', so Slackware looks 'unbranded' in the sense that there is no strong distro flavour. But no automatic dependency resolution out of the box and everything is decoupled (within the limits of dbus/avahi and other daemons).
My Frankenslack has some slackbuilds from 13.37, some from 14.0 and some from 14.1 and the only issue was Shotwell: I had to recompile one obscure library and then the Shotwell executable because of a .so name change. I can also use the GIMP 2.4 binary build (which I prefer for obscure reasons) on the 14.1 platform without major library replacement - not bad for 5 years. Not for minimalists (but see Salix as another commenter suggests) but you can keep it working well easily with polyglot software selections.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
