Slackware was great in that it did the one thing I want my distro to do more than anything, and that's stay the hell out of my way... Gentoo basically stays the hell out of your way... and Portage goes a long way to basically do exactly what you'd have done on Slackware without having to do it manually... maybe I'm getting greedy in my old age, but I don't want to compile my packages anymore.

Quoted in Michael Larabel, "An Interview with Ryan C. Gordon" Phoronix (2003-09-08)