Not based in UK, but I would be tempted to visit London once more on such occasion

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I've been hanging out on ##slackware but it's not very active. I'll check out #slackware.uk. Woo Coventry - you have some nice medieval pubs there [the ones the bombs missed].

Ah, looks like I've picked up the gauntlet here. I'll get on with arranging one when the time comes. I'll see if I can twist ruario's arm as well, and one or two other Norwegians.

Think not in terms of the time spent moving over to Debian, but in the time spent moving back from Debian.

There would be a lot less to do in Debian stable than in Slackware -current. As far as I remember, part of Debian stable's raison d'être is for there to be as little to do in the way of maintenance as possible.

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Very good point, my friend! Yes, after a short evaluation period I invariably do find myself going home to Slackware.

True. Now that does sound boring! I appreciate your thoughtful, logical counter points.

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Out of desperation, I briefly considered switching to Fedora 30 until Slackware 15 came out. My wife talked me out of it: "I know you. You'll get frustrated. It will try to do things for you and you'll have a bad time!". Switched to -current instead . Left Fedora on her desktop.

Agreed! Many people are forgetting this isn't Canonical or Red Hat. It's a one man shop aided by some community volunteers here and there. LTS releases are typically 3-5 years, and I consider 14.2 more stable than other distro's LTS releases

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ruario is Brit, Ødegaard is his wife's last name. Also an unicycler.

I've run current in the past, but that was always with the expectation that a release was imminent (months). I just don't have the bandwidth for never ending current maintenance. That's just my situation - I know others feel differently and Pat has no obligation to meet my needs.

But here's the thing. I wanted to build a NAS using Slackware. Ran into hardware issues with 14.2 and I ended up using FreeNAS and XFS. Runs great, meets my needs, easy upgrades... That's a box that Slackware owned and now it doesn't. On top of that, a loyal paying customer was pushed into looking elsewhere. That is just bad business.

I had a subscription for quite some time. I would gladly pay MS prices for the next Slackware release. I don't care if it's perfect. Good enough is good enough.

I've read through threads here. I've seen people much smarter that me (Alien) seem to be equally frustrated - if I'm reading that wrong my apologies. I want to support Pat, but for God's sake give me something to buy!!!

I just don't understand. Somebody explain it to me. I probably wouldn't understand, but at least I would know there's a reason.

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Happy Birthday 14.2! Also thanks to or BDFL. The only time 14.2 breaks is when I do something stupid, or some 3rd party package is screwy, or Nvidia!. Thus, I tend to stick with what Slackware provides OOTB and only hit up SBo as needed.

As for the "ageism," 14.2 is really not that old. Very rarely do you need the very latest bleeding edge software package to get work done. Hardware is the one exception (as mentioned above), as when on 14.1 I needed 14.2 for the all the new fangled stuff on the new X99 LGA 2011-v3 system I built. heck, the old P4 hobby server stayed on 14.1 until last year! Only reason I upgraded that was to drop the 14.1 tree and free up HD space.

Slackware 14.1 is more solid than Windows7 on the corporate overlord provided laptop. Later this year, I'll be "upgraded" to a new Lenovo laptop with Win10. The HORROR!

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I feel your pain, mate. I have 5 Linux work stations/laptops, and an OpenBSD laptop. I also have a Lenovo laptop running Win 10 Pro. You can probably guess which unit requires the most maintenance and TLC.

Happy?! It is TREE YEARS!! Next release after 15.0 over 5 years? Or more? It is only taking more and more time between releases. What is going on with Slackware? 14.2 is out of date. Certainly for servers.
I don't want to make people upset, but I am worried about Slackware's future.

There have always been people worried about Slackware's future, and I bet the first one has always been Pat. Let's not turn this into one of those threads, please.

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It is ONLY three years old (thanks for those!), I can't imagine being any less happy if it were four, or five, or...

Out of date? Well, perhaps I am too! Maybe that is one way of expressing one of its best qualities which appeals to me so much! Another way might be, "Continuing to prove its technological philosophy!" or "Never abandoned ideas which worked!", or my favorite, "STILL, and always, respectful of its users Freedom!"!

Only three years old but rock solid and places no arbitrary hurdles in the way of my ability to continue to maintain and use it as I please. The fact that its design principles greatly facilitate my ability to continue to extend, maintain and use Slackware-14.2 largely independent of what the rest of the world decides to do in the mean time is the very expression of software FREEDOM, and the primary reason I use Slackware!

Slow and steady Pat*, THANKS, and Happy Birthday 14.2!

* And Eric, Robby, SBo contributors and the many others not mentioned by name or unknown to me! Thanks!

Glad you love Slackware. If you had a family to support, wouldn't you prefer cash?

I do have a family to support, and Slackware has long facilitated my ability to do that, consistently!

I prefer the FREEDOM to do it myself, as I please, over anything as transient as box of cash!

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Slackware users donate between releases as well, to support Patrick's maintenance work (currently down to 14.0) and because they care about Slackware's existence and about its future. Not only about the DVD.

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When my computer died, I used my partner's laptop (windows 10...it's a mixed marriage) to play Guild Wars 2. Honestly, I think performance was about the same on GW2 as Slackware 14.2 with WINE and d9vk. My problem is that I use the keyboard to do a lot of things, and Windows 10 has different key commands than xfce.