I noticed that the list of repositories installed by the Vector liveCD (I think I have Soho) contains dozens of entries, notwithstanding that most are deactivated by default. The list is much larger than what I'm used to in Debian-based distros (which I'm trying to quit). I'm not a power user; generally all I do is word process and use the internet. Will I probably ever need the inactive repositories?

TLDR: do research first and then only enable the repo if you feel the need.

Use the default repositories until you find a greater need. There's no need to unnecessarily add repositories just because they're there. If your desired word processor is within one of those repositories then you would probably want to enable that repository to install it using the package manager.

It is always good to take care and understand what a particular repository does before enabling it. For instance, it might contain non-free codecs which would be a problem if you're attempting to keep a completely free system. Another example, user built repositories which are unmoderated. I've seen certain distros allow users to arbitrarily add to particular repository with the understanding that is its intended purpose. This means you depend on unknown built packages which could be malicious unless properly checked and tested.

The point I'm making, is unless you know the purpose of a particular repository and that you have a need for that repository, then there is no need to arbitrarily enable repositories just because they exist. Do some research into them: packages in the repo, purpose of the repo, sources, use google to learn more. If you start adding repositories for all you know you could just be enabling an alpha unstable package repo.

I'm not saying that as a VectorLinux user but simply a common sense Linux user.

SAM

Really, I'm talking about whether I can delete the repositories from the sources.list (or whatever Slackware distros call it), not merely whether I should activate them.