For bug fixes and hole patching?

How long after a new release is made does the old release get updates?

http://www.slackware.com/pb/

Here at the bottom you can see there are patches for 8.1-10.0. When -current turns into 10.1, it will also have patches.

Maybe when 10.1 gets here, 8.1 will stop getting patched?

Slackware is one of the easiest distros to get 0-day updates.

By using an updating tool like swaret or slapt-get, and setting its version setting to "current", you will always get up to date packages almost as soon as as they are released (add a few hours of mirror synching).

Some may argue that you may get packages which are not fully tested and buggy, but I find such occurances to be very rare for Slackware.

On the plus side however, you'll also be among the first to get a fixed one too

slackMeUp for what i've seen old versions (stable version, now 10) are updated only if there's a critical bug/fix. And there's no fixed time for them

From: http://www.slackware.com/changelog/

"Slackware-current ChangeLog
This is the current development tree for upcoming versions of Slackware. It's usually updated once a day, sometimes more. Things you see here will likely be included in the next stable release.

Slackware-stable ChangeLog
This is the ChangeLog for the latest stable release of Slackware. Changes are made in stable releases if updates are deemed necessary before the next release. A good one to watch. (Though perhaps not quite as much fun as -current.)"