There isn't support for DVD's out of the box, but it has become fairly trivial to install the proper libraries for DVD decoding. However, it may be illegal in your area to do so. Check your local laws before you engage in viewing your own legally purchased movies. The MPAA wouldn't want you to actually enjoy them, or anything...
Conclusion
The latest Slackware release is more of the same pure Slackware goodness from Patrick and Company. It doesn't drastically diverge from 10.2 but adds some new software packages and includes some newer kernel support. Hardware detection is pretty much as basic as it can be with much of the configuration and tweaking on you - the end user. Thankfully, it isn't hard to configure Slackware through its easy to find textfile-based configuration files, but newbies might be lost.
So is Slackware 11 a bad choice for new Linux users? Not at all. It's what many of us learned on in the mid-90's when Linux was a lot more limited in hardware support than it is today. But, I can certainly see how many simple things like adding a USB memory stick or setting up a wireless network card would be pretty complicated for a newbie. But the upshot of this steep learning curve is a deeper understanding of the system when compared to a Suse or Ubuntu newbie who just points-and-clicks.
Slackware holds a special place in my heart being my first distro and I'll always support them. But as I grow older and have less time for hand-tuning my system, I want things that Just Work(tm). If that's you as well, Slackware might not be the best fit for your lifestyle.
Package management is pretty bare-bones in Slackware but, thankfully, there are some great tools to help the user keep their software up to date: slapt-get and Swaret are two of my favorites. Otherwise you'll have to compile your desired software from source. Again, not a big deal but might intimidate the newbie.
So where does Slackware fit into the modern Linux distribution landscape? I don't really like where my mind takes that question. Slackware doesn't have a big marketing machine, no slick GUI installer, fairly primitive package management. But it does have a loyal fan base who loves the distro and loves to get under the hood of their system. It's similar to Gentoo in that respect and offers a level of configurability that you might not find with other distros.
Thanks to OSDir for the screenshots.
