Thanks for the comment. It was not trolling, malice nor sarcasm. It was just a probabilistic interpretation to the well known axiom that all good things come to an end. I thought it was amusing like "Life is a terminal disease", but I see that I was mistaken.

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I had voted for Debian. It think that it is still my preferred choice, but I might also consider Void Linux and Arch Linux.

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I would choose a non rolling, and a non systemd distro, AND which doesn't split packages to .dev and .dbg.
Besides Slackware, I don't know which Linux distribution fits this bill. Maybe Crux Linux ? Someone please tell if there is such a distribution. Thank you.

If there isn't any, I'll go for some flavor of BSD.

I voted Debian, but Gentoo would be a close second. The reason for Debian is proven stability, and Gentoo because it allows for non-systemd installs, and how you can customize it.

Of course though we hope there's never a day without Slackware.

If there were such a thing as Gentoo -stable, that would probably be appealing to me.

Devuan might be close to what you want. It's a Debian fork that doesn't have systemd.

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Oh I know very well what is Devuan. Unfortunately, it's no different from the old non-systemd Debian, which means it splits packages into runtime binaries and header .dev files, and many debugging .dbg files too.

BTW, I ditched old Debian in mid 2000s and switched to Slackware only because I've been fed up with Debian's dependencies hell. Devuan uses the same 'apt' system for "resolving" <-(note quotation marks) dependencies.

I have nothing against source based distros like Gentoo and its derivatives, but too bad they are rolling distributions.

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Interesting - why don't you like rolling distributions?

When that day comes then i will take a look at available options, who knows what choices we have in an non specified future.
I hope that it's still a long time before the Slackware saga comes to an end.

If it was gone tomorrow the i would stay a long time on current and update it still for some time and fingers crossed hope for an fork or new Slackware that keeps the spirit alive.
Why change ship so fast when i already have a working installation.

I just prefer fewer bugs in my installation.

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Understandable. That's why I run Arch and openSUSE Tumbleweed in VMs and not on bare metal installs.

Yes, what CMartin said. It's because changes made to a project will add bugs, and finding bugs so they can be fixed takes prolonged time and effort.

Traditional releases consist of a development phase, during which many bugs are added to the project, followed by a testing and code freeze phase, during which bugs are discovered and fixed, followed by a release.

This is superior to a rolling release, in which the development phase and testing happen concurrently. Not having a code freeze means that at any given point, there has been recent development which added bugs to the project which haven't been chased out yet.

Having a simpler tool which works very well is better than having a fancier tool which is broken.

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Not only that, but there are potentially new and different bugs each time you update. It's not just bugs either; intentional changes on the part of developers can also be disruptive to your workflow or at least require your attention.

Slackware is perfect because it gives you a rock-solid base and also makes it really easy to upgrade to the latest versions of most applications provided you can download and run a SlackBuild script. With Debian, for example, you have to hope what you're looking for is in the backports repository or package it yourself, including working out the dependencies so as to not have apt freak out. That's where the real beauty of no dependency resolution comes in.

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Probably one of the BSDs, though it's been years since I last looked over the options there.

Otherwise ... maybe Dead Badger Linux. Unfortunately, Badger PC builds are limited run and sourcing one may be difficult. (link warning: taxidermy.) Attempting my own build is likely a non-starter since I'm lacking in taxidermy skills.

A perfect example of this was a recent headache for me on my CentOS 7 file server. Nextcloud for CentOS is way behind on updates due to the fact that an extremely old version of PHP is used on CentOS. Normally I would use a PHP software collection to install PHP 7, which is what the latest NextCloud requires. My file server uses the ARM architecture and PHP 7 is not built for ARM by the PHP software collection for CentOS. As a result I would have to update NextCloud, it's dependencies, and create a PHP 7 environment. Too much hassle for a basic cloud instance for just my personal information. Needless to say, I am probably going to move this device back to Slackware ARM in the future. For now a samba share with rsync will have to do.