"It works straight out of the box" means "I didn't have to go hunting for extra drivers, like wireless drivers, or graphics card drivers, in order to get it to work properly." It doesn't mean that on first boot I am presented with an all singing, all dancing, all codecs present and correct, desktop that needs no further modification.
To me, the less I have to do to make it mine, the quicker I become bored. So the fact that I had to run slackbuild scripts to create the packages to provide flash, mp3 support, multimedia playback and so on is not a drawback, it's a plus. It means that I now have a folder full of packages ready to be installed on any subsequent reinstall, all of which were compiled on my system against the packages I added. The installation of which can be achieved with a single line command and all of which I know will work perfectly.
The installer works quickly (usually quicker than most other distros, with the possible exception of SalixOS) and I am not reliant upon an internet connection in order to get things sorted out as I have the compiled packages stored locally.
Slackware tends to lag behind the curve when it comes to bleeding edge software. This is not a bad thing, quite the contrary. It means what you get is well tested and very stable.
Updates for considerably earlier versions of slackware are still being released so there's none of this "end of the line, go get a newer version" nonsense imposed on me.
I do get some semblance of pleasure when people say "wtf is Slackware?" And I'm not in the least bit ashamed of that that feeling.
Further explanations would sound kind of synaesthesic.
