So yeah... it's been a while since I've engaged in any sort of idle speculation (Slackware-wise, anyway) but I think I'll try it for old time's sake.

So I'm looking at the Changelog a few minutes ago, and I've noticed that there's a kernel upgrading going on. Now, I've been accused of unexplained flashes of intuition before with a 90/10 percent chance of success and so I gotta ask someone that might know.

Is Slackware 15.0 getting close to release?

A couple of months ago, Pat popped up on a Facebook post of mine and I took the opportunity to see how he was doing and how went Slackware. He seemed to be pleased with wherever he was in the cycle then and I congratulated him for his hard work.

After noticing that entry, I've been wondering now. I would be pleased to see it.

Thoughts?

There is indeed a kernel upgrade. And another is expected very soon - 4.19.40. Those kernel upgrades are coming thick and fast at the moment, mirroring the activity further upstream.

Is Slackware 15.0 getting close? There's only one thing to say with absolute certainty: it's definitely closer than it was.

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Take a few minutes to read the last weeks, months of development in the -current branch and you will see *many* kernel upgrades. I don't think the latest kernel upgrade is a predictor of the next stable release.
When Pat decides that 15.0 meets his criteria for excellence he will release it. In short, we will get 15.0 when it's ready.

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The only thing absolutely certain is that nothing is absolutely certain.

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Speculation in the IRC channel has been that since Slackware releases use LTS kernels, and the 4.19.x kernel (the current LTS) is going to run out of support too soon to be suitable for Slackware 15.0, he might be waiting for 5.0.x to be declared LTS before making a release.

The 5.0.x kernel won't be declared LTS until 5.1.x gets a non-RC release, and maybe not for some time after that too, so we're waiting for that ball to drop.

Then again this could all be way off the mark. Nobody knows for sure except Volkerding, and he holds those cards close.

Edited to add: Looks like 5.1.x just got released! So we will soon see how this plays out.

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Guessing what Pat might do always has been an entertaining pastime. Probably one of the reasons many of us stick around.

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Or maybe not at all, when it goes like 4.x the next LTS kernel will be 5.4 or so.

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We seem to have a stable at 5.1.2 already FWIW

Yeah but we've yet to see a 5 series kernel tagged LTS on the kernel.org

maybe Pat is considering musl?

Maybe it's time for the bribes.

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clearly there's an option to email it to a friend

Excellent idea!

Let's get him drunk and version 15 could be... interesting...

But why the urge and requests for 15?
14.2 has just been released and what would be different anyway?

I *think* I've done my home studies correct, as I understand 14.2 is "constantly" being maintained and updated...

New here, so cut me some slack!

It is possible to send beer to people, like flowers. I prefer the former.

Support for newer hardware, for a start. I'm running -current on my new laptop which is all very nice, but I would rather be running 15.0. However, 14.2 doesn't support nVME drives, whereas -current does.

14.2 was released back in 2016. We're getting close to its 3rd birthday. In the ever changing landscape of Linux programs and libraries, it's starting to feel a bit old... mostly for hardware support as it lacks support for installing to NVMe and a lot of 3 year old and newer hardware. Some people are also running into issues with the libraries on 14.2 being old enough that we can't build newer versions of software. You can't build kodi v18 with vaapi decoding support because mesa is about 2 years too old.

There's been a lot of changes in -current, which is the development version of Slackware until it eventually becomes stable (which the next stable release is expected to be 15.0, but there's no public timeline on when that might happen).

14.2 is getting security updates and a few other updates, but for the most part, Pat tries to keep changes minimal once a stable release is made to try and keep it stable. All the major changes happen in -current.

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