Sorry - sent this to the wrong place first time around!
For what it's worth (probably not a lot...), I ended up with
Slackware 8.0 and Mandrake Freq on one machine for comparison. Speaking
as a complete non-Linux-expert, I found the only saving grace of Mdk was
that it worked my borrowed USB camera, whereas Slack wouldn't. Some of
Mdk's MORE frustrating habits included secretly writing to my OKI LED
printer and re-arranging settings that I perfected years ago and then
claiming that it was something it wasn't, and also inviting me to select
what packages I'd like installed and then not bothering to install them.
Slack, on the other hand, went in, got on, and generally did its bit.
Thanks to John Seago's timely intervention, I discovered that early
problems I was having were due to duff disks from Crazy Penguin. Linux
Emporium did me much better!!
I elected to install KDE on Slackware but soon began to hate its
bloat. Then I discovered ICEWM and there was no looking back. Partly due
to the very good documentation on how to configure ICEWM files, even I
was able to get it to work and add my own favourite functions. If I can,
anyone can. And ICEWM is FAST, even on an ex-skip P166!
So Slack+ICEWM gets my vote (speaking as a beginner, remember). One
or two people are gradually trying to steer me down the path of
recompiling a kernel to get USB to work with Slack. I lay awake at night
worrying about that, but at least I've got a Linux that works, enables
me to run Netscape, Acrobat, Xv and things and start the learning process.
Oh, yes - and ALWAYS have MC installed. Darned useful for poking
about to see how Linux works.
Hope this helps someone! Please delete it if it doesn't....
Gerald.