Back in the linux world again

[Arthur Pirika]

Hi all, I've been in and out of the linux world for a while, and decided to 
check back in a few months ago with ubuntu 7.04, when it was in late beta. A 
little disappointing to see gentoo and ubuntu drop speakup, but never mind. 
Actually, it's all accodemic for me, as i have no hardware, either speech or 
braille to begin with. I have a question though. I'd like to switch from 
ubuntu to either slackware or gentoo, as I'd like a little bit more control 
over what gets installed, and not have to worry about incompatibilities 
between locally built and pre-packaged stuff. My question is, is it possible 
to install slackware from another distribution? In theory, I can see this as 
beeing possible, but not sure what slackware's setup script depends on. My 
plan was to boot the ubuntu install cd with orca loaded, and then proceed 
from there.
btw, has any progress been made on porting speakup to 2.6.22?

thanks,
Arthur.