Apologies, my reply was quite flippant and dismissive. In reality, your question is completely reasonable, and such a question is not going to go anywhere unless there is an official announcement of either a date or the deprecation of the stable branch [unlikely].

We have no date or information of when Slackware 15.0 will be released. The only person who has any idea of when it is likely to be is Pat V. As for known stoppers, we have theorised stoppers of Xfce 4.16, qt5 and Python 3. Maybe the next version of KDE5. Additionally, the current LTS kernel 5.4 is not looking that good for purpose but I personally don't think that's a showstopper since the alternative is just to keep waiting on new 'better' LTSs ad nauseam.

I would advise pretty much anyone jumping onto Slackware these days to go straight to -current for both newer functionality and the learning experience. 14.2 is just getting too old now. When 15.0 does come around one can continue using -current or switch it to stable.

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To add something to Lysander's above response, I'd like to say that while I have altered my 14.2 install's set of libraries to a degree that, though not huge, does make it less "getting too old" for what I do. That doesn't mean newcomers are likely to feel confidant enough or have the time to work that all out and there Lysnder's recommendation of -Current I think is a wise one.

While it is important that at least some, and as many as possible, use -Current in the spirit it is designed, as a "testing" work in constant progression, it is also perfectly valid to stop at any point, even the initial snapshot choice, and just use it as it is with only security updates for the time until the next Full Release occurs. Just because of the labels it is not to be assumed that not being Stable, is identical to "Unstable". -Current is commonly extremely solid and stable, even with the most bleeding edge DEs.

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But you do get a lot of "secondary" updates, like
and then that boost update caused a lot of other packages to need REcompilation.
So selective updates sometimes turn out to be much more work then just updating everything.

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How is boost relevant to just security updates? I recognize that updating everything is an option for some, but that doesn't rule out new users who don't want or need the equivalent of a rolling release. In fact, if what you mean by "updating everything" involves automation of any sort, even slackpkg, I for one am never going to do that on my Main. I have in the past a time or two done the manual process of a full system upgrade, but I prefer a clean install. It's just... well... cleaner, and motivates me to scrutinize what I really need to keep around and what can be trashed, or "packed away in storage".

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I saw that this was marked "solved," which had me hoping there was some news I had missed.

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Thank you everyone for your answers.

I know that Pat visits this forum from time to time, he even answered my question once, so I assumed he wrote something about 15, but I see now that he did not.

I think I can move to -current, but I use a lot of packages from https://slackbuilds.org/ and it could be that some of them are not compatible with -current. Of course, everything could be fixed, but I like how these packages "just work" because they were tested on 14.2.

By the way, my question (the one that Pat answered) was about xterm linked against termcap (I had to recompile it with terminfo to get 256 colors). Pat said that everything is linked against terminfo in -current. This is one of the many improvements I am waiting for

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I still use 14.2 as my daily driver and only use -Current to "mess around" and sometimes as a template for how I might improve 14.2 (or whatever Official is at the time since I've done this through many versions) but I do know that there are mainly two reasons for Slackbuilds failing to build and run 1) Missing libraries, very rare from -Current to 14.2, and 2) Libraries with versions too old to satisfy what the program seeks/needs, never gonna happen. So theoretically at the very least any Slackbuilds that will build and run on 14.2 will also work on -Current. Like I said I haven't installed a lot of Slackbuilds in -Current but I really don't recall any failures.

ponce maintains a repo for -current compatibility with SBo.

https://github.com/Ponce/slackbuilds

https://github.com/Ponce/slackbuilds...ry-with-sbopkg

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The problem, IMHO, is this perniciously changes the "nature" of Slackware. I you need to go to -current to have a decently up-to-date system, Slackware becomes de facto a rolling release. What the point of a -stable release you'll have to leave because it will go too obsolescent?

The last development cycle took ~36 months, the current will reach 42 months. It's not for ranting, and I'm not saying things are misconducted, but the devel cycles are becoming obviously too long according to what used to be the balance which made Slackware the unique generalist distro it is.

Myself, for the first time, I wonder if I should not go to -current, and I agree with this comment that it would be *great*, even if I understand it might not be that easy, to have at least some kind of visibility. If the new -stable is coming in a couple of months, maybe I can wait, else I need to rethink and change entirely the way I organize things.

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So, NonNonBa, what is it that you find so obsolete on 14.2 that presents an obstacle for you? I'm not having that experience. There are one or two apps that will be easier to install for me and I welcome an uncompromised Pure ALSA system when new Official arrives, but nothing really is holding me back on 14.2.

Also my point regarding -Current was that it can be something akin to a rolling release if you choose so, or it can rest as a snapshot. It seems to me most use cases are covered quite well.

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By now there would be a lot of software where the latest versions can't be compiled for 14.2, KDE 5 is an obvious one (which I would like to try because of HiDPI screen support, and various other desktop annoyances that I hope KDE can solve for me). Hardware support on 14.2 can be another issue for people. At present 14.2 has an unsupported OpenSSL library. I'm sure there are other examples, but at some point an OS can become too old for certain needs. In many cases you can do the work to upgrade libraries, the kernel, and so on, but if you're going to do that then why not run -current? That said, I run 14.2 at work on my desktop (and -current on my newer laptop), and the only problem for me is OpenSSL 1.0.2; I think that's quite serious if it's going to stay at 1.0.2.

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I'm running 14.2 on three systems but I have compatible hardware.

Some time back I considered a new motherboard and AMD CPU for the office, but that is not going to happen until 15 is released and the proverbial dust settles.

I was thinking about a test run on a spare partition updating 14.2 to Current. I decided otherwise. I would prefer to test the update with something closer to a beta release, which would include KDE 5, likely Xfce 4.14, and possibly PAM.

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I've been there too. I stopped slacking.
CRUX is my choice for super stable and uber customizable distro.
Debian does a perfect job when I need an easy install and every possible package available.
I still keep a Slackware64-current VM and update it from time to time out of boredom, like today, waiting for the snow storm after the rain.
Unfortunately every time I am disappointed. Is there any hope for Slackware.


Cheers

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I understand. However, when I quit using an operating system I do not feel compelled to go to the operating system forum and let people know about my decision. Each to his/her own. Have a great day with your OS of choice.

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Classic ivandi, you are like a "Jack in the box". Every now and then you pop up, take a dump all over the place and are gone again. Noone knows exactly when, only that you will eventually pop up. It actually has become mildly entertaining.

*Stuffs Jack back into the box, winds up box* ... Well, see you next time.

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