A T470 won't work so well with Slackware 14.2. Among other things the video mode falls back to 640 x 480 and there are no network interfaces. Apparently the 4.4 kernel is missing certain required drivers. The simplest fix is to install the kernel from current. A quick reboot and everything works.
Maybe an upgrade of the kernel in 14.2 is worth considering

This is always going to be the case with the latest hardware in Linux in general. I don't know if upgrading the stable kernel is the right solution, but some distros have an "official" way to get a newer kernel on a stable distribution. Maybe something like that would be warranted. That would, of course, require more work from someone. Or, maybe it is most in keeping with the Slackware way to just leave it up to users to do exactly as you have done.

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Sorry, but Slackware hasn't traditional been a distro to spoonfeed its users. The kernel configs from -current are accessible. Nothing stops you from downloading them and compiling the newer kernel for -stable yourself.

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In such situation, I install 3 packages: kernel-generic, kernel-modules, and kernel-source from -current. For the moment, -current has version 4.9. If it's not enough, there is https://dusk.idlemoor.tk, which has 4.12.

You can try these.
https://dusk.idlemoor.tk/linux-4.12/

Historically, Slackware won't upgrade a kernel beyond the patch level releases. So, since 14.2 was released with a 4.4.x kernel, it will only update to other 4.4.x releases if there are drastic enough fixes (usually patching serious security flaws) that warrant an upgrade. So far, 14.2 started with 4.4.14 and has been updated to 4.4.75.

As others have mentioned, if you want to go beyond the 4.4 series, you're free to install -current's kernel, 55020's 4.12 kernels, or build your own based on the configs in -current.

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in the rare cases i face problems with hardware support (simply because I use relatively old hardware), i just grab the kernel sources and .config file from -current and compile the kernel on my -stable machine. Just as suggested above.

Very true. And great idea.

By the way, that ThinkPad is a nice machine. I say, go with ppr:kut. Don't touch the 4.4.x kernels and compile and install a new one alongside.

Check out: https://mirrors.slackware.com/slackw...rent/source/k/
You can download the kernel source from https://www.kernel.org/ and compile it for your machine using the SlackBuilds and the config from current. You have to compile the kernel-modules package as well. If you fancy the generic kernel, you can use that and later make the initrd. generic will take less time to compile than huge.

I also think you can safely build your own kernel-firmware package using the SlackBuild at https://mirrors.slackware.com/slackw...rnel-firmware/ and upgrade the firmware package from 14.2. This way you'll have more support for your hardware.

All the best.

Yes forgot to mention it also requires newer firmware then in Slackware 14.2 for the bluetooth and wifi

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