Hello.

First, I want to tell you that I'm a big fan of Slackware distribution. I used Slackware since version 2.3.

However, at the same time, I have to confess that I switched from Slackware to Ubuntu recently.

It was because the latest "stable" Slackware distribution was 14.2, which was released in 2016.

I'm a graduate student, majoring in artificial intelligence. So, after fresh install of the Slackware, always I do is;

1. compile kernel to enable NUMA.
2. upgrade python from 2 to 3.
3. install TeX Live (teTeX is obsolete now).
4. Firefox.
5. et cetera.

I know that most of the procedure I had to is solved in Slackware 15 release candidate.

But, 6 years were too long to endure.

For example, Ubuntu Linux release their LTS version for each 2 years (16.04, 18.04, 20.04).

So, my idea is that, to make a long story short, what about releasing Slackware distribution more often than now?

Surely I know that there's Slackware current release, but it changes too dynamically. I want a stable version of it.

People, especially programmers, like me, are happy when things are working as expected. And what is lacking in Slackware release policy is that. We have to wait indefinitely for the next release.

Honestly, I myself thought of forking the distribution for a moment, but as you know, another distribution is not a good idea. It just bring another problem.


I'll be glad to hear about the topic.


Best regards,
Sungjin

Slackware 15.0 is closer. Patience.

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Looking at the history between 2006 (Slackware 11, and the first Ubuntu LTS) and now (latest Slackware stable 14.2), Mr Volkerding has published 10 stable releases (soon 11 ...)
vs. Ubuntu LTS : 8 releases (6.06, 8.04, 10.04, 12.04, 14.04, 16.04, 18.04, 20.04)

I have absolutely no idea what will be the rhythm of the releases after 15.0, but I don't think we should make a general conclusion based on the last 5 years

Wait & see ;-)

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The Slackware store robbed Slackware's maintainer of $85,000 donations out of $100,000, leaving him only a few thousands dollars to live off of for a few years. I believe the next cycle will be different and the 14.2-15.0 development cycle was an anomaly.

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Anomaly for sure.
Where did you get those numbers RadicalDreamer? Not disputing them though its the first I've ever seen...

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First of all, it is not up to us... only Mr. Volkerding can decide about it. However, as RadicalDreamer said, through these six years, a lot of things happened in personal life of our BDFL (read his own words here), and linux changed rapidly. I imagine that the next release cycles will be shorter. Indeed, I am very optimistic about the next years (read more here). To quote noel, from alt.os.linux.slackware, "get your shiny fresh new drives ready" for 15.0, and come back to the light side of the Force.

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Yes that is it!
$100,000 - $15,000 = $85,000

There's a lot of love and caring behind this release.

A lot of people stepped up when they were needed.

That means something to me - about this community and about this distro.

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We're on the cusp of the release folks, and I sincerely hope we'll never see it drag out like this ever again.

My thanks to everyone who helped get us here.

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Remember, often Slackware-stable has daily downloadable updates. In a sense it's almost not true there wasn't another stable 14.n, because a few/couple times after initial 14.2, you could upgrade some major system components/languages/libraries w/slackpkg, maybe even had to reboot... updated versions just didn't get an ISO, but changed enough they could've been called 14.3, etc. This is what users of other OSs, and new users, typical article writers, technical site commenters miss: stable actually is updated more often than days before slackpkg (even than when there were at least roughly quarterly updates.)

But nothing change , 6 years after last stable are 6 years after last stable.

I can only hope that the release of 15.0 will generate at least as much, and that the vast majority will go to Patrick and his team. They deserve it.

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What you said is false; I explained above: see ChangeLog.txt! As for GUIs, you could also get newer KDE from alienBOB and newer XFCE from rlworkman, for Slackware 14.2

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I don't know about newer versions of XFCE but Plasma 5 required Current:
"I recently noticed that people are still downloading and installing my ageing ‘ktown’ packages for Slackware 14.2. Those packages have not been touched since end of 2017, they may contain security holes, and they do not represent the state of development of the KDE software today.

Therefore I am giving you a heads-up that this weekend end of May 2020, I am going to remove all the old packages on ‘ktown’ for Slackware 14.2 (that’s https://slackware.nl/alien-kde/14.2/latest/).

If you want to run KDE Plasma5, you should migrate to Slackware-current."
https://alien.slackbook.org/blog/kto...-offline-soon/

There are people that will happily use 14.2 for years to come and 14.2 is constantly being updated but many people want newer versions of packages. What happened, happened. It is time to look toward the future. In a few hours Slackware 15 will hopefully be released and all those bad memories of those evil robbers will be a distant memory.

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