Calling everyone who has who has used both Slack and Gentoo!

I am currently using slack and well i am looking into gentoo. :P

i just want to get a feel for what people think about the 2 distros?

any comparisons would be helpful!

what do you guys reckon??

I used Slack 8 for about a year, and have been on Gentoo for maybe 4 months now. What I like about Slack:

Clear easily customised initscripts. Source-based. Works well with vanilla kernels and standard packages. Fairly large userbase. Stable. Well documented online. Very easy to do a minimal install. Fast. You are left completely in charge of your system configuration and maintenance.

Why I now use Gentoo:

Portage resolves dependencies for you AND works nearly all the time. Good user base. Well documented online. Good forums. Minimal install. Fast.

What you may not like about Gentoo:

Tortuous initial install, and system updates if you wait too long between. A little quirky at times. Full optimizations and unstable packages are available if you want them, and can have you chasing your tail. You have to learn the Gentoo way of doing things to manage your system(s).

what do you recommend i do? download the small 4omb iso image or go for the larger one (600mb) i want to beable to install fluxbox, gkrellm, xmms and so on so i guess i will need a few libraries.
I will need things like glibc, etc how are these included? ie: in which image?

If you have a good internet connection I'd go for the small image. Then you can grab the stage 2 or 3 tarball (if you'd want that) from the net - no need to burn them to cd. The large image also has some already compiled 'major' packages (X, KDE, Gnome, Mozilla and OpenOffice I believe). All the other things you mention (flux &c) are not on the image anyway. You will emerge them (gentoo-speak for download, compile and install, including dependencies) after you've finished the basic install.

ok, so if i grab the small image i wont have any dependency problems when wanting to install gkrellm and flux etc? everything will go sweet?
ie: so i wont have to download things like glibc and imlib and so on?
what i am looking for is a minimal with just the basics so i can build it up myself and learn along the way, atleast then i know what is going on.

i just want the basics to be there like xfree and so on so that when i come to install stuff like gkrellm, then i wont have to fluff about trying to download major stuff like gdk and glibc and imlib to satisfy dependencies.

All I can say is that the portage system for Gentoo is badass.... Slackware is awesome, and I still have it on one computer.. but Gentoo is fully optimized from source...... Always the latest software, and if you have a good connection to the net, it really doesnt take that long.... I would have to recomend Gentoo.