Hi,
Slackware is my Linux preference. Have used it several years now. I'm running 12.2 at present with KDE4.
And playing with Slack Current in VirtualBox.
My PC is multi-boot - Win XP or Slackware 10, 11 or 12. With Win 7 on order.
The default boot for Slackware is good old LILO! grub is available, but you have to think a bit about configuring it.
I use grub 0.97 to control the booting. Easy to change. Hopefully straightforward to extend to Win 7.
Will treat myself to additional disk for Win 7 (avoids repartitioning and should be 100% safe).
I find VirtualBox and VMWare Player to be really magic to allow to experiment safely with other OS.
At one time or another have tried (with greater or lesser successes) Solaris, all flavours of Windows and various Linuxes.
Have played with Ubuntu and Mandriva in VirtualBox or VMPlayer, but still prefer Slackware.
I see the appeal of Ubuntu - very automated. Fine until something goes wrong - just like WIndows in that respect.
With Slackware there is total control. You decide what to install, or not.
It doesn't automagically manage dependencies, but automatic dependency managers are available.
Initial installation gives a reasonable selection of packages, but does require a smidge more thinking than a Ubuntu installation.
And I've never been happy at the idea of Ubuntu in a multi-boot situation. The installer feels too automated
to be able to stop it trampling over existing installations. With Slackware you don't need to install any
boot mechanism; you can simply reboot off the installation DVD.
Cheers,
Peter