I have been using Slackware since the mid-1990's and it is my favorite Linux distro. However, the package management situation does, indeed, suck. It is not a technical problem. I'm sure that Slackware people are completely capable of adding a dependency list to packages and automatically installing the dependencies. But Slackware people (and I am one of them) do not like automatic stuff that cushions them from the reality of their system. Slackware is about knowing what's going on in your system. A consequence of wanting to know what's going on is information overload. I like being aware of what's going on, but it does consume some time.

When one installs a package in Slackware using the installpkg program, files are copied to the filesystem of your machine but they are not guaranteed to run. installpkg will give a return value indicating success even though the installed program is not in a runnable state. Typically one then runs the program and when it tries to load dynamic libraries, it fails, and error messages are printed. If it can't find libblah.so.4 what do you do? You go to linuxpackages.com and enter libblah.so.4 and you don't get any response. The search engine on linuxpackages.com is ineffective, which is to the detriment of Slackware and its users. libblah.so.4 might be included in a package that is on linuxpackages.com but you will not have a systematic way of determining which package you need. Be aware that packages for previous Slackware versions usually will work on newer Slackware installations. The next step is to use a web search engine to try to find people discussing the problem. Installing a common package becomes a problem-solving endeavor in Slackware. In the end, you are vaguely aware of what libraries are used by the programs you use. Maybe it is worth it. I don't know.