Debian Verses Slackware?

[Hart Larry]

First of all, I want to thank all of you for sharing your ideas in your 
favorite distros.  My friend will be building me a machine--and at home he is 
demoing these 3 distros we were reviewing, Arch, Debian, and Slackware.  He 
like myself loves LILO, but when he installed Debian with an LVM, just kept 
saying lilo 10.  So he wants me to consider Slackware.
Well, in looking at some hand-picked favorite packages, Debian testing and 
unstable has much newer versions than Slackware.  An example was tcsh which 
slackware is only on 6.15 while Debian testing is on 6.17.  Likewise for 
mp3gain
While Slackware well supports speakup, in looking in the package list, I could 
not find either word speakup or blind.
Does Arch Linux support a DecTalk USB?
So around December 03 we buys supplies from Fries--and-away we go.  I look 
forward to reading all your comments on my outstanding concerns, including 
getting lilo working in LVM--and-thanks so much in advance
Hart