I am trying to compile mplayer2 here, and I have a mess as usual. The latest reason to crap out was that Slackware-14.0 has python2.7, but mplayer2 uses python3

Python3.0 was released in 2008. There was a bugfix, and only 3.0.1 is up on the site now. They are now on python-3.3 and counting. Any reason why Slackware is still back on python2.7?

How should I approach adding python3 - keep the 2 versions? Do I need different directories? They are incompatible, it seems.

Not even Ubuntu or Fedora use Python 3.x and they are bleeding edge. Don't expect Slackware to use it any time soon.

Mplayer2 is worthless. The devs only like to remove functionality claiming it is terrible, unmaintainable code, and add ridiculous dependencies like Python 3.x. Use regular Mplayer.

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Most distro's still use 2.x as the defauly python because there is a lot of existing code that would break with 3.x at this point. You should be able to install 3.x side by side though and just point the stuff that needs it to use python3 instead of the default python

I don't know anything about mplayer2, but I must say that I have some sympathy for the idea of ripping out terrible, unmaintainable code.

:-)
I don't know if anyone else remembers this, but they used to race 50cc motorbikes at one time. I'm in a similar business really with the ATI graphics chip on this Laptop (RS690 aka X1250 aka rs600 aka r4XX aka ... aka ... aka ... I digress). I went through the pain of updating to Slackware-14.0 for the later video & mesa, and it has helped. We have just broken through to where you can lipread conversations in time with the speech, which for my box is a breakthrough.

The README sounded good for mplayer2(better use of acceleration), and the punishment might be good for me.
Nevertheless, thanks for the review. I'll review my reasons for using it before going any further.

/OT
50cc racing was hilarious, if you had the sense of humour for it. Little rashers of guys in leather like spandex flat on (tiny) patrol tanks doing crazy speeds yet slowing to basically nothing on a little hill against the wind. Honda had a 50cc twin 4 stroke which was designed to rev to 17,000 rpm but actually held together at 22,000 rpm, and went faster; it had 17 gears. Suzuki had a similarly geared 2 stroke three cylinder 50, and Yamaha had a twin and were building a 4 or 5 cylinder when the racing guys ruled the lot out and said "max 2 cylinders and six gears under 250cc"

Python 2.x is still alive and kicking. Eventually it is going to be replaced by Python 3 but it seems that for a good few years those two versions are going to coexist with 3.x VERY SLOWLY pushing 2.x out. Python 3 was released in 2008 and the Django Project, for example, added experimental support for Python 3 this month. This speaks volumes. The implementation of Python 3 is somewhat slower than it was expected because:

1. In some areas Python 3 is not compatible with Python 2.x so thousands of scripts all over the world could break if distros switched to Python 3. Mind you, IIRC, Python 2.7 has many features implemented in P3k. There are also tools to port python 2.x scripts to P3k.
2. Python 2.x still does the job.

For the above mentioned reasons there hasn't been much demand for Python 3. Having said that, eventually it will take over.

Back to the original question, you can easily run 2 versions of Python alongside and point mplayer2 to P3k if you want.