Ok, i've been running slackware for a while so far, and i love it, and soon i will be getting a laptop, and i was wondering if i should stick with slackware, or if i should try gentoo. Which is better? from someone whose tryed both...also the only thing that turns me off about gentoo is the long install....

but after the long install, you have an amazingly fast system... almost as fast as slackware.. i use both,, even right now. i am sticking with slack on anything though. the gentoo systems i have are just systems that i experiment with alot, and it is alittle easier to emerge mplayer than get all the sources or packages for slackware. but for you question, what kind of laptop is it? i have had both on laptops (old and new) and they are always very responsive, however if the video card on the laptop is (for instance s3 prosavage ddr) unsupported and doesnt have linux drivers, it is hard to emerge anything with gentoo. on that particular card, portage would always want to get the card working right, instead of vesa framebuffer driver. but since there are no drivers for it, the emerge would fail and i would have to compile sources anyway. Slackware is nearly unbreakable, that is y i stick with it. both are amazing, but from experience, i have had far fewer issues with slackware on a variety of systems. i do have an amazing install of gentoo on a box right now that works seemlessly. smooth running and all emerges work like they would in a dream. but this system has a 2.4Ghz P4 with a gig of ram, and the mobo is an nvidia chipset and so is the graphics card, and gentoo has no problems upgrading xorg on emerge mplayer (this is just a common problem i have had, that is y i keep refering to mplayer) surprizingly enough, slackware is much faster on slower systems. with all the optimizations you can make to gentoo, the default slackware install on an ibm thinkpad with a 266mhz p2 and 97 meg of ram is faster than a customized gentoo install on that system. no discouragement though. i think the best way to see is to try both. you will not lose much, but time, if you install gentoo first and see how it goes. if it works great, there isnt much difference in slackware and gentoo as far as systems, they are both closely related to unix. gentoo is very well written and has several features that no other distro has. so it is worth a try, then if all else fails, look to the subgenius..

ps, even stage 1 gentoo install isnt too bad if you have a fast system, and a decent connection.

yea, i was thinking about taking this computer and trying to install gentoo and use it as an experiment while i have slackware on my laptop. Also i have no idea about the laptop i want, as far as it is right now im looking at HP, but i also want to consider Sony Vaio and Toshiba laptops. I won't be buying one till mid augest so i still have time to decide. Yea i ,know stage 1 isnt bad, but then what do you have to brag about? Thanks for all your advice, ill take that into consideration.

Gentoo's emerge system is amazingly handy.

Long install but IMO it is worth it for the speed.

I have never tried slackware. I might in the future.

I installed KDE but I hear fluxbox is also a good WM.

I think you confused stage 1 and stage 3.. but whatever. DONT GET HP!!! as of the other day i am boycotting them and i am advising all of my customers to do the same, and now i am advising everyone on linuxquestions to do the same. if you purchase an hp laptop (mine is a dv1130us which is a nice laptop.... but) you will be forced to only use the wireless card that is in it, or a marked up "hp supported" card. and if it is like mine, it is broadcom, and only ndiswrapper works for it, and doesnt work very good. it is fine if they want to do this, but the only documentation about it is misleading at best, and never once states that you cannot upgrade with a generic ($20 vs $150 for the same card from hp) or a high power linux compatible ( i bought a $150 400mW atheros chipset card for mine). they refused to help me resolve the issue, and wouldnt give me an older bios so that my card would work. so i tried to hex edit the bios, but it is digitally signed. so i asked if i could have a bios update to see if ( for the sake of arguement) the card would work with a newer on, and she supplied me with a site for a windows only phlash program. so then i installed windows onto my previous swap space and executed the bios flash, and it failed to make a backup (keep in mind that the bios was digitally signed and so i couldnt tamper with it, so it was not corruption on my part.) and gave me no option to bail out, and the flash failed. then hp told me that since i installed linux i voided all warranty and would repair it for $$$. i complied of course since i bought it for 1200 bucks. they are saying that it is an fcc standard for the wireless minipci thing, but my friend with his brand new dell had no problem with the card. at all. and the card is compatible with the system cause if i power down, then power up and wait for the bios to finish the check, then slam the card in before grub boots me, everything is fine. and the card kicks ass. soo, that is my thoughts for the hp. check things like that when looking for the laptop, make sure the video card is nvidia or intel or ati, or another supported card, not like my averatec laptop ($700) that was s3 and i couldnt even watch a movie on it.

by the way, this is the same for ibm now. but thier bios is hackable.

yeah, cool got the email. portage is really nice, sometimes. but not always, like i said. for the most part i had a great time with gentoo, but emerge is what make gentoo awesome, without it, it is lost. and if there are some issues, or bad ebuilds (which happens sometimes) i dont want my os to be lost just cause of somehting like that. i have use something called emerde on slackware. it takes gentoo ebuilds and packages them to .tgz and installs them on slackware, with dependancies and all htat. but it is tied to the same fate as portage for gentoo. there is also slapt-get for slackware, memics the debian package program apt-get. you can install source rpms on slackware. anyway, the point is that there are more options, gentoo may be a tighter systems, once you bootstrap, but it is not as solid as i am used to. try to break slack, i have broken gentoo.