Slackware 13 was released yesterday. It's the oldest currently maintained Linux distribution out there, and with good reason. It is clean, simple and without the "bells and whistles" that clobbers up so many other distributions.
Slackware was for myself (and for many of my friends and colleagues) my first encounter with Linux. I used Slackware for many years, and still do on occasions. Its a great distribution to really learn Linux and not learn a Linux distribution. I will say that if you really know Linux (and Slackware), you will know most Linux distributions as well.
You would think Slackware was abandoned for other more popular distributions nowadays, but there is still a large active Slackware community and user base out there. It is in fact, one of the most downloaded Linux distributions (in both MB and number of hits) for Norway's largest ftp-site:
http://ftp.uio.no/stats/usage_200907.html#TOPURLS
