You've asked this several times and have received answers to it already. But, to answer it again, a lot of people need the hardware support that's been added in the software. A 3 1/2 year old release is a long time in regards to hardware support. Since 14.1, there's even additional features that have been added to my 8+ year old video card (the ATI HD3870 was released Nov 2007 and 7 years later, Dec 2014, Linux 3.18 added hardware accelerated video playback -- which on older hardware, becomes more and more important with these high bitrate videos). My newer HTPC that uses hardware from last year isn't properly supported in 14.1. Even with an updated kernel, Mesa isn't updated enough in 14.1 to support it, and to upgrade Mesa, requires upgrading X and several other dependencies. When you start looking at 14.0, that is even farther behind and would require many more updates.

Personally, I haven't ran into any issues with software, but I tend to get most of my stuff from SBo, so it's already been tested to work on my version.

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No kidding if you have a really new laptop 14.1 is probably not going to cut it. Not to mention some of the newer desktop and workstation setups. The newer kernels have support for newer hardware and that is a good thing.

Let's not forget that customizing and upgrading a kernel are not daunting tasks, so upgrading Slackware just to get a new kernel is kind of an overkill, thanks for the decision to ship in Slackware a kernel as unmodified as possible.

Just get a config file shipped a newer Slackware version, possibly one in /testing and off you go.

I'm running 14.0 on my main production server, and I'm happy with it. On the other hand, when clients bring me new laptops for a Linux installation, I'm increasingly annoyed with 14.1 not supporting some of the hardware. This is the reason why I'm eagerly - but nonetheless patiently - awaiting 14.2.

Niki

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Since there are several similar responses regarding hardware support, and only dugan directly addressed specific software benefits (honorable mention for slacker1337), let me give my view on hardware support en masse rather than individually.

Hardware support is a kernel issue NOT a distro release issue. While it is true that Patrick does a nice job with Huge and Generic, making it quite convenient (and apparently for some compelling to stay with the Official kernels), as quoted above, I did say "updated kernel" and it just isn't that hard to build a custom kernel especially in Slackware and also given Alien Bob's excellent and easy to follow method in his blog. As long as you keep the working kernel you can't go wrong and there are still some benefits (albeit fewer than with 2.4.x kernels and under) to be had by spending that time. In fact I just filled out a survey on a software site that is looking to discover the level of desire to add an Option dependencies window to xconfig, so it is effortless to know when more than one module must be supported to get a desired support. So "rolling your own" is becoming easier all the time. This is why I wonder why all the "waiting for Xmas" anxiety.

Perhaps some of the gap between those rapid upgraders and me is simply that I don't use laptops much so I don't need new laptops. Given Joanna Roskowska's recent talk on Intel's stated path for the future I am considering a Lenovo X60, though ancient in PC years, will meet my needs while maintaining the best security that will be sorely lacking on new machines in the very near future.

Don't get me wrong. I'm excited about 14.2 partly because Plasma 5 seems an important refinement, much needed for KDE, but I'm in no rush, as with those improvements also comes a lot of work to install all the extras (some of which have no SlackBuilds) and do the configs I need.

With certain hardware (probably the most common being network devices), this is absolutely true. A kernel upgrade will bring the necessary support to run that hardware properly. Unfortunately, with graphics, it is not always true. As I mentioned in my response to you, many times, for upgraded graphics, you need an updated mesa. And to upgrade to the latest mesa, you need an upgraded X, libdrm, llvm, etc. That is not a simple change. If you only run Nvidia graphics using the proprietary drivers, then this issue likely isn't actually one, since all the support is provided with the binary driver. For those of us using opensource drivers, newer kernels and the underlying video software updates are the only way to bring updated features and add support for new hardware.

Not necessarily. It can also be an X issue.

OK Thanks. Now I see one good reason, Nouveau. Apparently, according to bassmadrigal, I have a blind spot or a memory failure since "many times" has been stated twice, and I have no memory of this told to me, ever. This is vaguely possible since I would never use nouveau unless it equaled or improved on nVidia's own. If this is the case then not only am I glad for the the specific problem description but for that as well. I surely had no desire to offend anyone with the crime of asking a question more than once.

Maybe they weren't all by you, but I've seen and answered this question probably at least 4-5 times on the forum. I guess I just assumed (yes, I know why you shouldn't assume) it was always you, because it isn't very common that people question others intentions on desiring a new version of a distro. Trying to do a search through my post history with LQ's poorly displayed search results, I did find another response I gave to a similar question from ttk. So, I'm sorry for incorrectly stating they were all yours

As for your case, I doubt you'd ever need to worry about it, since I don't think nouveau is in any position to come close or surpass Nvidia's binary drivers any time soon. For people not running Nvidia hardware, OSS drivers can see vast improvements with updates to Mesa, which also might require updates to additional dependencies like X. It is difficult to do all these updates yourself (took me about a week to get my updated mesa, X, and other dependencies up and running on my system for that added support).

@bassmadrigal - a week? Ouch! I have heard some people prefer OSS to Alsa but I depend rather heavily on Jack and Ardour so afaik I must stick with alsa. As for nouveau, I'd dearly love to be all FOSS but I need the 3D support nVidia provides for some minor CAD work and gaming, and I also feel I owe considerable loyalty to nvidia for supporting so many alternate operating systems for so long. I fully understand and respect those who can get by with nouveau and am sorry it's an added burden to deal with X and Mesa to use it. Perhaps that will soon pass.

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Sorry to take so long to reply when this is a very valid point. However it is also one that begs the question "Can this be improved?" when "improved" and "better" really only mean "different" and the value of that difference is relative to the user. There do exist things that improve some aspect while sacrificing others, and others that are so fundamental, any improvement is highly unlikely. Also, when we are talking about human operated devices there is an unmentioned, often overlooked value to minimizing change so that an intellectual capital can be accumulated. For these reasons I do often question the net value of changes, since so many are made for change sake or for an individual to "make his mark". A recent, sweeping change in this category is (dare I mention the 's" word"...oh well...all adults here, right?) systemd that despite all the claims and flames has one substantial condition - major broad and deep changes with proportionately very little benefit to Users.

In your case of a more efficient GUI, nobody can argue against that. Thanks for your measured, smart response

Make it today

Yeah, there was a lot of compiling and then it erroring out so I'd need to find the missing dependency and then try again. And X has a lot of packages that need to be compiled and many of those have different dependencies, so you might have to recompile things multiple times. Then when I thought I got everything, I'd install all of them only to find some other thing I was missing that didn't cause an error on the compile. It was a time consuming process, but I learned a lot (and isn't that the best part?).

Sorry, for this I meant OSS as in Open Source Software.

Keep in mind, Nvidia chips aren't the only graphics card in computers. I realize that nouveau is seriously limited compared to the binary drivers, but AMD's opensource drivers are giving their proprietary ones a decent run for their money, and I don't even think that Intel even provides binary drivers and only offers opensource (and Intel graphics are getting much more common with whatever they call their APUs in a lot of systems). There's been a lot of discussion over the past few weeks or months to find a decent version of the Intel driver for -current that doesn't cause problems on someone's hardware.

Wrong. Try to install Slackware{64} 14.1 with a recent kernel on a last-generation laptop with some hybrid Intel/NVidia card and appreciate the results.

That would be nice! We should get back on topic and speculate when we can expect 14.2.
Soon.