Preferred combination of stable/current and ktown?
 

Which combination of stable/current and ktown do you prefer?

I assume that you mean the repositories provided by AlienBOB where we find mostly KDE 5 and applications associated to Qt5. Is that right?

I exclusively use Stable until the current development cycle nears its end and stay away of any KDE stuff but for a few tests, hence my answer "Stable".

PS Qt is awesome, but I am a complete beginner and just did put one toe in PyQt to take over qControlCenter backed by Qt4.

I like and use both stable and current with XFCE. I don't use KDE5.

Before 14.2 was released, I was using stable 14.1 with the latest ktown, but then it was still KDE4 and was mainly a bugfix over the version included in 14.1. I'm currently only running one system on 14.2 (an htpc running KDE behind kodi), however, I intend to upgrade my desktop soon (but I've intended that for quite a while now... I'm not sure when I want to actually take the time, effort, and downtime to do it). But, on my desktop, I don't imagine I'll get the itch to use ktown unless the development cycle turns really long again. If Plasma5 could be installed alongside KDE4, I might consider that for some testing/playing around, but I know that Eric's packages don't support that anymore.

I also tend to not follow -current because I don't like the constant moving. I tend to prefer to find a version that works fine on my computer and stick with that. Right now, things are close enough I'll probably just stick with stable, but if it gets long in the tooth again, and I need better hardware support or newer software (I'm eyeing building an AMD Zen system next year, so I'll likely need at least a new kernel if not a whole slew of other updated libraries for proper support) , I'd probably consider switching to -current, but once my machine stabilizes, I'd probably stop following -current and then only upgrade if there's some substantial reason or the next stable version is released.

Long story short, I'm voting for just stable.

At the present time I'm running two Slackware64-current boxes and three 14.2 boxes. It is my experience that -current is remarkably stable(I dual boot Slackware64-current and OpenBSD on my main work station). There are changes, but, the changes are measured and hiccups are rare. The changes don't impact my ability to get things done.

Oh, I agree that -current tends to be stable, but I don't like the constant upgrading of packages, because that means that I might have to constantly upgrade my 3rd-party packages. I know it really just depends on what Pat pushed and many times, the upgraded packages don't affect the programs, but when things break, they tend to do it at the worst time possible (but then, any time you want to use the program and it doesn't start, that is a bad time).

I also dislike restarting my machine or the desktop for the more invasive programs (X-related upgrades, kernel, KDE, etc) because I tend to have many programs and many tabs open and I don't like losing all of that. I've had the kernel upgrade installed on my 14.2 htpc box for a few days and I still haven't rebooted that machine for it to load the new kernel.

Following -current just doesn't work for my usage of Slackware. I used to be all about running the "latest and greatest", even running nightly builds on my Android device (even occasionally cherrypicking commits and building my own version), but nowadays I tend to prefer minimizing the ruffling of my software's feathers (probably why I *still* haven't upgraded my main machine to 14.2 yet). I tend to have uptimes into the hundreds of days on my machines, so rebooting (and even restarting X) rarely happen. Even my Chrome has probably been up for at least a month without closing it down (it should probably be updated next time I do).

I started using Slackware when 14.2 was in the RC phase, so I used -current then. I've been using -stable since 14.2 came out, but I will probably hop to -current again once the next release is in beta. Other than that, I do sometimes upgrade software by using the SlackBuilds and source from the -current tree, which helps keep your rock solid -stable machine from feeling too out-of-date. I typically only do that for end-user applications as opposed to core libraries or utilities, which would be more likely to break something. (By the way, the ability to do this with so little fuss is one reason why I love Slackware.)

KDE is my go-to desktop environment when I want a desktop environment, but nowadays I'm finding myself almost exclusively using awesome window manager. I really like how easy it makes it to switch back and forth between tiling and floating modes (toggling window decorations on/off as appropriate) depending on whether I'm using it for work or leisure. Eric does a great job with ktown, though.

I'm waiting for KDE5 to make it to current. I'm content with KDE4. I'd add KDE5 to my installations if I could install it alongside KDE4.

I haven't had much problems with current. The only issues I've had with it were nvidia drivers (that were rectified) and xorg, and freeglut 3.0.0 and vlc (missing libglut.la) which resulted in a downgrade of freeglut.

I generally prefer KDE applications to their counterparts from that other place, but I don't use KDE as a desktop environment, so I'm not much interested in ktown.

I have had very few problems with --Current and none that were more than mildly annoying, as opposed to significant or crippling.

Nice! I really do love how remarkably stable Slackware is; killer uptime is the norm with our distro. I'm cheap and like to have a lower electricity bill, so my work stations are shut down when I call it a night.

P.S. I've moved one of my -current boxes back to 14.2. Current was running fine. I'm now tracking -current on one work station. I do enjoy being a beta tester. :)

I prefer -current because of the latest availability of build tools. However, I use WindowMaker for my WM and don't like the memory used by KDE and it's applications. I tend to like the "make one tool to do each thing" and "keep it simple". So I like -current immensely.

I like stable, and will play with current when its "frozen" if there is a long lag between releases, otherwise I stick with stable.

mix of packages from Eric, Robbie, Slackbuilds and SalixOS.

Note that there is no viable "ktown testing" at this moment, the stuff in there is outdated. What you need to use is "ktown latest" which was compiled on Slackware 14.2 and will run on Slackware-current too.
If you want to know how Slackware64-current looks with Plasma 5 (ktown latest) bolted on top of it, download and boot my Slackware Live PLASMA5 Edition.

I've found my electric bill will only be $15 extra if I run all my machines 24/7 each month. That is well worth the cost of my data being available whenever I want it and not needing to exit out of everything every night nor wait for systems to boot to be able to use them (especially since my "more expensive" running machine acts as a server to my "relatively inexpensive" to run htpc). But that is certainly a "to each their own" scenario as I realize my usage does not mirror other's usage.

I was using ktown with stable 14.1 but now, with 14.2, i am using the stock kde.
In my boxes, i am switching between xfce4, kde and openbox all the time. There was some controversy about plasma, i don't know what is the situation right now, but i really like kde 4.14 and i don't feel the need to replace it.