Still exactly the same:
- It is the most unix like linux distro, where everything is as simple as possible and with less layers. Only on this 15 release slackware will finally add pam support, not because it really needs it, but more software requires it. Gentoo and debian have many layers to allow then to be flexible, but that also makes everything more complex
- it just works! either server or desktop, everything included works and was well tested. If i need to compile anything, everything i need is already there. Gentoo is too complex and with too many software combinations that makes things fail. Debian also works well, but if you want to compile something, you will need to hunt for many packages to be able to get everything ready to compile things
- small , fast and clean. As no extra layers are added and do not aim to have all packages, slackware installs are small and simply enough to understand
- KISS! keep it simple, stupid! Neither debian or even worse, gentoo are simple. Try to understand how everything works on those systems and you will have a hard time
- excellent disto to learn about linux as you can follow how things are connected and very few "black magic" is needed, unlike gentoo and debian. Even packages are simple tar.gz. No dependency check, if you fail to install a dependency, you will learn that package X needs package Y too. Not to say that learning is simple, but on each failure you will learn lot more than using other distros. For learning, the only distro that surprass slackware is LFS (linux from scratch)
- while 14.2 is old already due to the age, 15 have up to date packages... that work!. No need to choose a stable but outdated software distro (debian) or a unstable bleeding edge distro (gentoo)
in recent years you also get this one:
- systemd free! slackware uses still simple BSD scripts to boot and session management and likes use elogind
- pure arch or multilib. officially slackware is either 32bit or 64bit, but you can make it multilib by replacing the glibc... so you choose if you want a pure system or a multilib one
- while many people want other software not included in the distro, external slackbuilds allow one to quickly compile most of those software, similar with gentoo... but you also have external repos, namely the biggest one, Alienbob, with most of those packages already build. Yes, steam and games work perfectly in slackware
