Is Slackware 14.2 compatible with a i3 10th gen processor?
 

I experimented with Slack on a VM and found out that I liked it's philosophy and general way of doing things. I want to try and get it to dual boot with Windows in my new laptop (a Dell Vostro).

Will the outdated kernel in 14.2 work (well enough at least) with my laptop's i3 10th gen processor?

Thanks in advance!

An i3 is fine. I've a 2012/13 vintage i3 @2.4Ghz and it goes ok. I'm using current, so there's no need to use 14.2 unless you want to.

Thanks!
So should I take the -current iso from AlienBob's site?
And will the installation differ significantly from 14.2?

Yes, that iso is very helpful. The installer is about identical to 14.2.

Thanks! Will get back after trying out -current.
Think I can mark this thread as solved...

While I love the fact that Slackware doesn't make changes just to appear "new and improved" and thereby promotes actual gain in experience because most of what you learned yesterday, or 10, 15, 20 years ago still applies today and will tomorrow, please do recognize that -Current is NOT a rolling release but it IS a Testing release. Thankfully the high quality of coders who flock to Slackware, and the fairly singular vision of development, makes Slackware's -Current more stable than many distro's Stable.

TLDR it would be wise, even if just at first, to keep your 14.2 install and install -Current on another drive or partition.

I would be extremely satisfied with 14.2.

My laptop is a new model (first released probably 7-8 months ago) and hence the worries that wifi driver, etc. won't work and that I won't be able to google myself out of all problems. I need my Windows partition for AutoCAD, etc. Hence even more worried I might mess up things.

Anyway, I've decided to take the risk and try 14.2. Will try -current if not able to setup everything properly...

I recommend AlienBob's Liveslak isos. Then you have a live USB where you can choose the DE you prefer (xfce, mate, plasma5). You can add multilib capabilities if that's of interest, tweak the system to your liking (language, keyboard &c), get a feeling and then install on your computer.
See https://docs.slackware.com/slackware:liveslak and https://slackware.nl/slackware-live/ for the isos.

Thanks! Will I be able to install it by the usual method (partitioning & setup command) ?

Edit: Went through the docs and I think I can.

Just a note FTR. At this very moment, I'm installing the latest (October) -Current on a second partition on my ancient T61P Thinkpad which also has 14.2 on it. When I first installed 14.2 on it 4 years ago, I had to download and install a firmware file for the internal WiFi to light up and work. I rarely use a laptop so it still has a pretty old kernel on it, 4.4.20. The new -Current install has kernel 5.4.69 and I was happily surprised that upon the very first boot, WiFi works out-of-the-box.

The point is that it isn't the distro that supports hardware, it's the kernel. If anything is not recognized or functional you can choose to patch or ad to what you have. b uild a newer kernel, or move to -Current which already has newer kernels. All of those work. FWIW my 14.2 install on this Main box, has kernel 5.5.2 on it, mainly because this motherboard has no PCI slots, so my awesome ESI Juli@ sound card had to stay with an older machine, and I was forced to temporarily use a PCIe Soundblaster Zx, and they were only recently supported in newer kernels. I may have to upgrade that kernel when I replace the Zx with either an EVGA Nu card or an Asus Essence. They aren't fully supported yet.

If you are going to use AlienBob's Slackware Live isos then you need to use "setup2hd" to install slackware to disk. Its a script he provides with the live image so you can just run it from a terminal while using Slackware Live. The rest of the setup is extremely similar to the standard installer you would use in 14.2.

The readme for liveslack is good to read over if you want to start using it, he's added lots of functionality to the scripts which are documented there (including about setup2hd).

http://www.slackware.com/~alien/liveslak/README.txt

Good luck with your install, whichever method you try!

Thanks!