I think when I mentioned the idea about point releases, it was under the assumption that, if that model were to be employed, all major releases in future would also be major version numbers. Eg, 15.0, 16.0, etc. It's not like the point releases that have existed thus far have any rhyme or reason to why they are point releases. Eg, 14.2 could have been 15.0 and we would have been none the wiser. It's not like in the old RHL days where the point-releases all used the same major versions of gcc and glibc so that the binaries were all inter-compatible with one another.

Slackware isn't the only distro guilty of this... remember Debian Sarge in 2005 was 3.1, after Woody 3.0 which was previously released in 2002? That was ridiculous. It definitely should have been 4.0.

So the hypothetical patch-releases going forward would be 15.1, 15.2, etc. 3-decimal point patchlevels are a bit awkward, eg, 14.2.6... makes sense for the kernel where there are soooo many releases, but for a distro like Slackware at this stage I don't think it makes much sense.

And when we're going 3 years between releases, even just basic updates of all packages will probably be 'major' enough by then to warrant a major version bump. Going 1 year or less between releases as was the case several years ago, I think the point release model was more meaningful.

3 members found this post helpful.

I have been a slackware user for the last 22 years. I have always been appreciative of the rock-solid stability of the OS. It has been my OS of choice for Linux. It's reliability has been a God Send for me.

I run a few production servers for a non-profit organization in which we run slackware various versions of 13.37, 14.1, & 14.2. As we make use of a collection of esoteric 3rd party packages, it would be helpful to have a stable version released, even if it does not have KDE 5. I have kept older versions of Slackware running because of some of the customizations required by 3rd party packages.

I would appreciate a stable release that could be a 14.3 release as slackware64-current is now and the KDE 5 et al can be for a 15.0 release down the line. With the new Ryzen processors, it would be nice to take advantage of them for a server. I have been reluctant to move 3rd party applications to a moving target of current thus have kept older servers running on antiquated hardware. I am running production servers that are brittle to down time. There are many features in current that are desirable that would be nice to take advantage of.

I understand the extra work to maintain every release and the load it places on Mr. Volkerderling and do not wish to introduce that. Is there some kind of compromise. Three years is almost a lifetime in how software has progressed.

Another motivation is to update everything to stable & secure OS, is that the non-profit is also a constant target of Russian state sponsored DDoS and cyber attacks.

1 members found this post helpful.

Trivial to whom? I tend to hear air being sucked through teeth whenever somebody declares something to be trivial. Newbies lack knowledge and business users lack time. For such folks "trivial" is not part of the conversation.

I agree that in a business environment most admins likely use some kind of imaging process to install new systems.

This is how I understood your proposal.

Perhaps from a marketing and PR perspective, the previous release numbering scheme probably did not help Slackware. Perhaps each new release should just be a whole number. Not even a dot-zero.

This is the sad upsetting reality nowadays. The pace of technology changes exceeds any single person's ability to cope. Software developers seem to no longer care about the big picture but instead myopically focus only on their own project and develop at breakneck speed. Software is now little more than a personal playground. For example, recently the Firefox developers announced that next year they would transition from a six week release cycle to four weeks.

An approximate 2 year cycle seems sane and finds some balance to this upsetting trend. The number of major changes would be less at that pace, but the software stays reasonably current with the maddening upstream pace. A consideration is long-term maintenance for Pat. Possibly Pat would have to be more zealous with EOL announcements for older releases.

Another motivation is to update everything to stable & secure OS, is that the non-profit is also a constant target of Russian state sponsored DDoS and cyber attacks.

2 members found this post helpful.

Not to mention some of these OS needs 2x hardware specs just to run decent. I'm not upgrading my hardware just to keep up, its not worth it.

1 members found this post helpful.

Unless you talk about Plasma5 or Gnome3, that's not true. A XFCE desktop on Xubuntu, Fedora or OpenSuSE behaves same as its counterpart from Slackware.

But the Plasma5 or Gnome3 tends to abuse the graphics card and to do a significant greater load on it for the same features, like "blur" or whatever. At least from my own experience.

2 members found this post helpful.

NO, it's NOT.

Just imagine:


Cheers

9 members found this post helpful.

Again with the trolling. I have used Slackware in a business environment for years, and it works great.

If you don't need PAM for AD integration there is no reason not to use Slackware for business.

5 members found this post helpful.

2 members found this post helpful.

JRF (je ris fort)!

On the subject of Plasma5 being slow though... @ZhaoLin1457

I beg to differ. Speed also has to do with perception of speed, and not just how many CPU cycles and RAM are free by the OS at any given time.

On Plasma5, which I run on 5+ year old hardware btw, it feels faster to me than XFCE. Hear me out.

For example, when I hit "Alt+F2" and start typing, and the file or directory I am looking for appears immediately, and I hit Enter, and Dolphin opens immediately, with a smooth fade-in animation, I get a perception of speed. Whereas on XFCE, my workflow isn't as fast and smooth at all, because the whole interface doesn't feel as thought-out and polished.

Again, I must emphasize.... this is 5+ year old hardware! I'm not exactly running state-of-the-art stuff here. My PC runs like a beast on -current and it's relatively modest by the standards of when I put it together - Dec of 2012. The only thing I did to upgrade it several months ago was add an SSD for about $40 CAD.

Also on my laptop which is now 5 years old (dating to 2014), Plasma5 works without a hitch. It doesn't even have an SSD at all, that machine.

I'm not sure at all what people are talking about when they say Plasma5 is too heavy for their machines. If it works for me on 5+ year old hardware, it should work on most relatively recent machines. And for even more dated hardware, you shouldn't expect to be able to run flagship DE's anyway and should expect to have to run lighter-weight WM's and DE's.

1 members found this post helpful.

Gee Poprocks we may know some of the same folks... the ones that said KDE 4 was too bloated and slow to run decently on their dual core 3GHz boxes with 4 GB Ram while 4.3 ran passably well on an ancient Sony laptop of mine that sported a PII-433MHz CPU and 512MB Ram. Go figure

Why do you post here?

4 members found this post helpful.

Lover scorned would be my guess.

Since that's really creepy, let me expand a bit.

If I understand correctly, @ivandi did the work of integrating PAM into earlier versions of Slackware. While that was to scratch an itch that he had, I believe that he was nonetheless willing for that work to be integrated into Slackware itself. Well, that never happened (to date as I write this).

Since that wasn't a trivial amount of work, I can understand why he might be pissed that it was never integrated into Slackware.

Since he's an adult and reading the various forum posts, he is certainly able to explain how much fecal material this post contains.

EDIT on 07 October 2019: I'll also add the @ivandi was using his PAM integration as part of his business but (as far as I know and what I know may be completely wrong) was nonetheless willing to allow his competitors access to his work.

Any newcomers to the forum may not know this, but I've said some very harsh things to @ivandi in the past (I think I've gotten a warning or 3 from the moderators as well for such). Nonetheless, his slackbuilds are available for any to use.

3 members found this post helpful.

Slackware isn't a community project. Was he asked to do it?

3 members found this post helpful.

Plasma 5 on OpenSUSE Leap 15.1 is running nicely here on a dozen battered Dell Optiplex 330 clients with Dual Core processor and 2 GB RAM.

1 members found this post helpful.