[_ck_]

Let’s put it this way – bbPress is running with slugs and rewrite rules on literally thousands of servers, so the problem is likely your setup, not necessarily bbPress.

mod_rewrite should be virtually 100% internal to apache and not really depend on the OS/filesystem underneath but there’s always a chance for something to be interfering.

If you are using the bb-admin/rewrite-rules.php in your htaccess and you have slugs turned on and it doesn’t work, then I would bet that you have another mod_rewrite rule somewhere that is conflicting, either in the same htaccess file or in a directory above it. Do NOT use multiviews. I cannot help you if you are using multiviews.

I need much more information, like your htaccess file, and any htaccess file in directories above your forum. Is bbpress running in /forums/ or in the webroot (ie. / )

Also are you running wordpress at the exact same time as bbpress? I don’t mean standalone integration, I mean loading within each other. Because I am not sure how that would be handled and I never recommend it.