I am curious as to why/how you have concluded so. I have a box that was once my main running 12.2 that will never be upgraded since it became an appliance, specifically a DAW. At one point I had to say "This is good enough. Now I want to do work with it" but as you can see this came about purely by accident of timing. I consider 13.37 to be especially good and in most areas, superior to 12.2 at least in such areas as I work. Those benefits simply are not compelling enough to do the whole thing all over again on my DAW.

Somewhat similarly my main use box runs 14.0 but there are times in the past that I ran Current. Example - for a few years I ran a dedicated Minecraft server which at one time required Current. What is "best" for me is what runs on my hardware and does the jobs I need or desire to do. Simply upgrading the kernel seems sufficient for most boxes that spend any time connected, but this does have limitations. To the DAW this is irrelevant since it is no longer ever connected. Obviously the Minecraft server being constantly connected required some continual change/upgrades.

What about your 12.2 makes it "best" for you and how long can you maintain it so?

I'm running a recent longterm kernel (3.18.16) on Slackware-64 14.1 with no problems. Actually I could run from the 4.x branches if I wanted but I prefer to stick with a longterm release branch. Everything is working for me, slackbuilds is great, and from there I get quite recent versions of R, TexLive, Libreoffice and a bunch of other stuff. I can run a newer Firefox if I want (using ruario's script or just extracting the binary from Mozilla somewhere locally). I probably won't even upgrade to the new release for quite a while since I've just set up my new system. I understand that different people need different things, but for me the current stable release leaves me with no fear of being called ancient or "missing out" on anything.

There is no such thing like "-current stable release", I don't know how many users run also -current along last 14.1 release. My pot was not addressed to -current.

Well my statement was partially a joke, but not at all. In fact this is my personal view,
comparisons go through over distributions or through other releases, comparing to other Slackware offers
extreme flexibility, trough releases: lower version than 12.2, there were missing important features,
higher versions were at points unstable, eg. due to switch KDE 3.5 -> 4, so for me for long time
KDE 4 desktop was unusable, well for others KDE 4 works fine, but thats the point: for some people KDE 4 works
for others does not work. While for KDE 3.5 there were no such troubles. Of course as Linux matured,
there is better support for hardware, than Slackware 12.2 can offer, out of box.
At some point you can't go forward without upgrading kernel. But my system is almost untouched,
and it worked on laptops, boxes, as virtual guest, all without troubles.
New kernels with modesetting can really make life difficult, similarly 'automagically configured' X-server,
can be pain.

S/He probably means the latest stable release. Current stable release is correct terminology (note that the original post used "current" not "-current"), but since Slackware has -current, it can be confusing to use the word when referring to the stable release.

Sorry that was a bit confusing, I meant the latest stable release (i.e. the 14.1 release ISO, nothing to do with -current).

Just change file /etc/slackware-version

I'm A-OK with the whole "when it's ready" thing, but at the same time I feel some desire for more frequent communication in a "Oh, hi users -- here's what we're up to" fashion. I'm just naturally curious, I guess. No big deal.

With a project like Debian (and I know that it's not, in terms of number of developers/maintainers/mammals involved, a fair comparison), while the systemd'oh! decision was regrettable, I do like that I can find out things like "package X is in this state right now."

Black boxes make me antsy. Sometimes. I mean, c'mon, I read Dune.

There is no secret. They are up to the preparation of a new Slackware release.
.
I can even predict what will happen next with a probability very close to 100%. The new release will be announced, the team will take some well deserved rest, then a new development cycle will begin and some folks will ask "when will the new version be released"?

If I were a mathematician I would call that recurrence.

1 members found this post helpful.

+1

Here, here!

Been a slacker for some years now & sniff a new release well on the way. One must not forget, this is Slackware, not Arch..hehe.

I don't understand why a new release is so critical to everyone that "When is the new release?" has to be asked constantly.

• If your operating system is doing everything you need it to do, why ask?
• If you aren't doing bleeding edge development, why ask? Install -current if you are.
• If you are that worried about hardware support, why not just upgrade the kernel? docs.slackware.com has excellent information on kernel compilation.

Despite what the current trend is with rolling release distributions, everyone seems to forget that those distros have significant problems causing severe instabilities nearly every new update. You simply do not run into stability issues in Slackware because of the thorough testing and development cycle.

6 members found this post helpful.

Agreement at all +1

That question is a time honored tradition here on LQ for as long as I've been a member. Slackware requires little maintenance so some Slackers get a bit fidgety while they wait. We suffer from the tyranny of perfection because Slackware runs like a perfectly tuned machine. There's not a lot to do once a box is set-up. Praise Bob.

3 members found this post helpful.

That's true. My -current box runs like a solid UNIX machine, so much so I had to install the kernel 4.2.rc-2 to play around with and finally managed to hit a gpu bug. It was fun..

Regards.

1 members found this post helpful.

Because in many cases a kernel upgrade is not sufficient, you may also have to upgrade parts of the system and many people are not comfortable to upgrade only parts of the system, especially if it is an essential part, like Mesa.
I don't know which experiences you have made, but for me this was and is not true with Debian Sid, Gentoo and Arch.