Aww shucks, tried to have reasonable discourse and all I got was an armchair diagnosis of a mental disorder. Makes me feel all warm and social.

A tarball is hard, but 2 tarballs wrapped in an ar achive is easy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deb_(file_format)#Design

From the 14.1 release announcement: "Have fun! :^) I hope you find Slackware to be useful."

I see a happy smiley face and friendly tone, but we shouldn't let empirical evidence get in the way of a good stereotype.