Slackware was first released in 1993 by Patrick Volkerding. Version 12.0 is the most recent release. Slackware ships with KDE by default. If you would rather prefer Gnome, you can get them from droplineGNOME, GWARE and other projects like the GSB Project. The Slax project helps fit Slackware on to a 128MB USB disk.
LinuxPackages is the place to check if any of your favourite tools / utilities / applications are not found in the Slackware release.
A nice article on the init sequence by Joe Brockmeier.
