Is Slackware in extremis?
 

I fret....

To the extent that every living person on this planet is in extremis, yes it is. Patrick Volkerding and the rest of us will all pop our clogs some day.

Is Slackware in extremis right now? I very much doubt it, but Linux and its ecosystem are a complex beast these days. I'm no expert but I suspect it's a lot harder to maintain a distro and to make decisions about where to take it than it was even ten years ago, never mind twenty.

And then there's life. Trying to keep yourself and your family in food, clothing, Guinness. Paying your mobile bill and your ISP bill. Family. Car. Money. Age creeping up on you. Does it really surprise you that the energy to steer a complex project like Slackware might not be the same as it was 25 years ago?

Don't worry about it. Or, if you really want to worry about something, just worry about where we're all going. There's no System Restore feature in Slackware, and there's no System Restore feature in you, me or anyone else either. Everything on this planet is in extremis. Does that answer your question?

What is it, like every three months someone asks this?

Slackware is not. My main system is still Salix (running slackware-current on laptop). Salix, which is slackware improved for desktop use, is still the best out there.

Linux however is in decline, quality wise. The number of crap I see there is more worrying then the state of slackware. And Lally is right, the ecosystem is far more complex then 10 years ago. Most stuff added by some other distro's is messing with structures and principles of a proper system and the security of it.

But salix and slackware 14.2 can still be run fine for the next 5 years. No hurry to upgrade.

Probably because they think Slackware is one of those distros that is just hanging on by a thread (it's not a major distro, even though it's one of the longest-lived ones).

Nope, can't find it there; have a look invaluable, pretty sure that's where it's at.

No. Slackware is in active development, just read the changelog.

http://slackware.osuosl.org/slackwar.../ChangeLog.txt

Debian 9 was released close to 2 years ago, and there's no date yet for Debian 10. CentOS 7 was released in 2014. No one loses their s*#t when these distros have long release cycles. Everyone loses their mind over Slackware.
I am content to wait for Slackware 15. Pat has a proven track record for getting it right.

Just run -current and you can relax.

Agreed! I'm dual booting Slackware64-current and OpenBSD on this unit, and running Slackware64-current on two Thinkpads and two other desktops.
Praise Bob! :cool:

Seriously man.

Is Slackware in extremis?
Don't know...don't speak Latin. One thing for sure though, it's in all my computers. If I try to get rid of it, this sepulchral voice comes from the speakers saying: "I'm afraid I can't let you do that, Brian."
(Couldn't resist...'bye again...'til next time.)

Slackware is fine, and will continue to be fine.

Patrick and his lieutenants are doing a great job, and the project has a great many invested users. We won't let it wither.

Search for "thanks to" in the -current ChangeLog for evidence of users' support for this ongoing endeavor.