Wow, lot's of folk have upgrade fever, understandably in today's times. However,Slackware is an exception to the "popular" distro. It is built for rock solid stability, security & functionality. Has anyone running 14.1 experienced any major problems? I'm a Slacker for years and have never been let down by the development cycle. Patrick and team have a winner and they know it...and proceed appropriately.

I think this is the longest gap between a release so far in the history of Slackware, so of course people become nervous

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I think, no reason for release new version very often.
Slackware uses by pro admins\users, as server and workstation OS
In some situation need time (for example one year) for update on our PC\Server, from old version to new, so if release make very often, no enough time for update all our old system.

And if slackware-current update often, it signaling "all good, slack team work, and slackware is alive".

*Old Guru mode*

Like, it's all good man. Ain't no worries over Slackware man. Like, Patrick's all cool and stuff with the stuff and things going on, so like, all we do is wait patiently man.

I wouldn't say it's a problem, per se, but my old graphics card (ATI HD3870), had significant driver improvements with newer kernels (3.18+) and mesa-10.4+. One of the biggest for me was the addition of h264 decoding (prior, it would only decode mpeg2/4, which I didn't have anything high enough quality in those formats to run into playback issues, but I had a lot of high-quality h264 files that would struggle with CPU decoding). For me, I recompiled a ton of programs back in December so I could enable the updated vdpau support (this included compiling newer versions of X, Mesa, the kernel, and various dependencies to those -- and then recompiling them all again on a 32bit machine so I could upgrade my compat32 libraries) since -current didn't offer what I needed/wanted at the time, but not everyone wants to go through the hassle of doing this (and some people just don't have the technical know-how to do it).

I know there have been a lot of other improvements with other video cards, some providing substantial performance increases. Not to mention the new hardware that just isn't properly supported with 14.1.

So, while there may not be "problems" with 14.1, it is starting to show it's age with proper/updated hardware support.

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Slackware 14.1 is now old enough that current applications will no longer build on it. Dolphin (the emulator) has required GCC 4.9 since May 28, for example.

That's a major problem for me, and I'll be moving all my boxes to -current soon.

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To summarize:

• If you have only old hardware and don't need to run very recent versions of software, you can stick to a stable version as shipped. Some folks are even still running very old versions of Slackware, for which security fixes are no more provided.
• If you need to use a more recent hardware and/or software, try to run a newer kernel and/or a newer versions of relevant software on top of a stable release.
• If you need to update a core component of Slackware like gcc or libc for something to work you'll have to either run -current or wait for the next stable release.

But is that a scoop that deserves the headlines?

No helpful responses. But from what AlienBob's comment, I assume Slackware hasn't moved to a rolling release.

..and OMG! 0_0 I hope it never does.

What do you mean "No helpful responses"? A good chunk of the posts stated that there will be a new release. We just don't know when it will be. This has always been the way Pat has handled releases. We might see a beta release, but sometimes he'll jump right to the RC releases when he feels -current is where he wants it to be.

There is no public timeline/roadmap on releases, and Pat may not even have one for himself. The mantra with Slackware has always been "It'll be released when it'd ready." The only person who *might* be able to give you a better answer is Pat himself, but he might not even know when it will be released yet.

If you need a distro with a more frequent release schedule, and you're not willing to run -current, Slackware might not be for you...

@quietguy47 - I'm surprised by your "No helpful responses." comment. There are a couple of pages of responses looking at the release situation from various perspectives, and very specific response that YES there will be a new release. Please give an example of what you would consider a helpful response to your 16 word post.

EDIT: bassmadrigal already responded. I shouldn't have answered the phone before submitting.

The book will be a historic reference anyway.

Cheers

Cool. It seems there are a few truly legitimate reasons for a full new release but most respondents here can solve any issues by simply building a new/custom kernel and/or getting new drivers. There really are very few hardware issues, if any, not fixed by new kernels and/or drivers. Most serious issues are software. I'm wondering if, knowing that, it isn't possible (if it isn't already done) to lean heaviest on those issues minimizing the need for constant fast upgrades to the entire system.

I hope some people can see there is benefit in keeping some basics as they have been so that users don't constantly have to learn new stuff that doesn't matter one whit. It seems to me that Firefox is thrashing around so much they are losing share with insignificant changes. It would be as if car manufacturers suddenly tried steering wheels in the center or swapping clutch and brake pedal locations - far more trouble that any conceivable benefit. I'm betting Patrick would enjoy the reduced pressure, making it truly fun again like in the beginning, instead of such a burden, (if he feels that way.... I'm just guessing) and users would perhaps understand the extra value of a distro in which form truly does follow function and where "new" doesn't always equate to "improved".

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If I would be you, I'd thank all the posters who have taken their time to respond to this beaten up question which roams in the interwebs since 1993, when I was 6 years old and probably still peeing in my bed, and would walk away marking this thread closed. Be generous man.

Thanks.

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Well said. Thanks