Which sports a quite stable Wayland/Plasma5 as far I seen on several of my boxes, BTW...

One single other distribution looks sporting a Wayland/Plasma5 5.21.x so stable: openSUSE Tumbleweed.

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Indeed! I'm really liking Plasma on this box. Stable and responsive.

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As usually every attempt to discuss ends in the same way: People Who Knows Everything Better Arrive
this forum looks like private club. Even if we would try to go our own way PWKEB won't allow us. I would try to open my own thread but no matter I knew PKWEB will arrive sooner or later. And issue the command above.

Edit: I can add that to go off topic is one of privilege of club members.

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Discussion is discussion. You're free to have an opinion and people are free to disagree with it. I disagree that Slackware should ship with an older LTS kernel because it is very likely that 5.10 will continue to improve stability and will end up as a 6 year support kernel. I've provided my reasons and backed them up with solid data to show why I believe my assumptions will likely be accurate. You're free to disagree with those, but the data I provided is accurate, nonetheless. Maybe the outcome won't match my assumptions, but the outcome I presented is likely to occur based on the data available.

However, when you say that factual data is inaccurate, be prepared to be called on it. When you say I'm wrong, even when I posted a specific link showing I was accurate, yeah, I'm going to go further and show I'm correct when I know the data backs me. I don't care if you question my assumption that 5.10 will be a 6 year kernel (because that is an opinion of mine), but when you say I'm wrong that every LTS kernel since 4.4 has been released with 2 years of support that was then eventually extended to 6 years of support at a later point, while including a link to show that data, I'm going to continue to show that my data was indeed accurate.

Time to grow a thicker skin if you're going to call people out and be wrong about it...

@hitest, sorry to continue in this off-topic discussion. If you'd like to report these posts, maybe a mod can separate them into their own thread.

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You can't please everyone.

This is Slackware. You can run an old kernel if you want to. There is nothing stopping you.

But I don't know why you'd want to when 5.10 has proven itself to be quite stable. From what I've seen, it has superior hardware support, uses less battery and allows the CPU to run cooler.

The last 'refresh' of my laptop was in late January. I haven't had any issues with the 5.10.10 kernel in more than 6 weeks of daily use. I'll certainly be upgrading when 15.0 drops.

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Thanks bassmadrigal. No worries, mate. I don't think that mod intervention is needed yet. I'm happy with the thread as is. We're knowledgeable people who have strong opinions(me included).
I think that 15.0 is shaping up to be a stellar release. I'm curious to see if Pat is going to wait for 5.11.x or maybe he's waiting for something else. It's a great time to be a Slacker.

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I don't think 14.1 got any kind of fix against Spectre and Meltdown. Pat provides what he can get from upstream, which becomes an issue when everything is meant and thought to be permanently soon replaced. I even wonder if there's still a real point in supporting releases older than the last stable.

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I don't run stable, I run Slackware64-current. However, I suspect that there are some trusty old servers out there that are running 14.1. I'm really happy that Patrick supports older releases for as long as he does. That is comforting for sysadmins.
Slackware 15.0 is shaping up to be a robust, stable long term release. I'm very grateful for the efforts of Mr. Volkerding and the Slackware Team.

Slackware as a distro would ideally switch gears after this 14.2 to 15.0 gap - there are "worm signs" the whole GNU/Linux ecosystem has undergone entropy changes (and not in a good way IMHO) and projects seem to have accumulated corporate-like residue that rendered other projects/companies obsolete too, historically:

I would ideally like to see Slackware consider offloading some (many?) of the core OS to the port-like SBo.
The concept is proven to be working really good for the time and would allow the core team to focus on what can't be possibly offloaded.

For the most of the time of the life of Slackware (may it live many more years to come yet!) Pat and team looked up to the older and presumably wiser communities out there and picked the moves steering Slackware clear of danger and insanity. Perhaps time has come to realize there are not much models left out there to look up to?

Maybe Pat is now one of the very few leaders of what's left of the sane distros and time has come He has to show the way this time?

I imagine a slimmed down Slackware focused on the core system across few architectures:

- x86
- x64
- ARM
- a64

each as bare metal and virtual, disregarding any but the most basic desktops (fluxbox, blackbox, TWM and maybe LXDE for the sole sake of one more easy themeable login manager) and the most basic score of hosted services (yes for SMB/NFS/FTP/BIND/NTP but no for HTTP (aka LAMP)/DB/EMAIL/remote admin/distributed security)

IMHO this would streamline the release cycle and maybe allow Pat to have time to spare - time he would most likely spend to bolster the Slackware-SBo symbiosis and allow for a more easy transition to SBo hosted "complicated" desktops and other software suites?

What happened to Slackware's renowned KISS?

Just my 2c

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SBo is not a "BSD-ports" like infrastructure. It's rather a huge collection of stand-alone SlackBuilds.

And it is a mistake to think that the BSD-ports are pure source based like SBo.

No, those are their build scripts and usually are shipped binary packages for every support architecture. Everything driven by a package manager with dependency resolution. Yes, they have this on BSD for their ports, no matter which flavor.

I believe that a real BSD-ports like infrastructure, with associated binary repositories, will no happen until Slackware accept to have a package manager with dependency resolution.

No, I do not do a dependency resolution apology, but I think it's lack is what generates this mega-structure which is now Slackware.

However, if ever Slackware will ask me to build Plasma5 from sources starting with Qt5 on my 2W CPU, probably spending weeks for this, will be also the day when I will probably conclude that's time to install something else.

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Sounds like you want Slackware to become more like BSD. Or Crux perhaps. But I can see a problem going down that road.

Slackware doesn't do any dependency checking. The rationale for that has always been that it makes it easier for expert users to modify the builds to get less bloat in running programs (though more in storage). And people who don't know how to use tools like ldd to do their own dependency checks can simply do a full install and know that everything they need will be there.

SBo works on the assumption that people who use it will already have a full Slackware install, so it only provides dependency info for extra dependencies. If your installed base is a skeleton system, that assumption won't be valid any more, so how do you deal with the dependency problem? Something like Debian can start off as a tiny net-install and then be fleshed out, because everything else that you install comes complete with everything it needs, thanks to the dependency database. That wouldn't work in a BSD-style Slackware with ports and a skeleton core.

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Like maybe St Patrick's Day?

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Where to draw the line would be the question of all questions agreed, and i guess a current (one more $1 mio question - which qt version exactly?) version of QT would most certainly be smart to ship as a core option (as in binary pre-built package)

Further, no one says there would not be binary packages for the SBo-s - I was only playing with the concept of what makes a "Slackware release" and to tighten that circle - we are already past the point that all users install KDE as a "default" install of Slackware - the yet another $1 mio question is - how far are we past that threshold? And how far down that line is it more work tha it is worth for the Slackware team?

A day might come when Slackware has to choose to endorse systemd to keep KDE shipped, what side would You fold to then?

IMHO Slackware is bigger than KDE in significance already, but I understand not everyone might agree with me on that.



Slackware already is "more like" BSD among all other GNU/Linux distros.

Everything that differentiates Slackware from BSD is why i use one and not the other. Slackware IMHO is the better compromise and i vote by using, advocating and trying to add value to it.

The core Slackware comes shipped as a bundle and all dependencies checking is done elsewhere - on the filed it is regarded as a indivisible whole - yes.

Then again in what you wrote, it sounds to me as if you where defending a person who is "free-riding" a full KDE install on top of an Slackware without worrying of any dependencies? I wonder why do i see it that way ...

True, SBo has some infrastructure in place that does some dependencies checking and so far (i use sbotools FWIW) it seems it does an decent job at that - and it is getting ever better )

All i say is, and i might be speaking way in front of the due time, there might a point down the road a choice is forced upon us.

I for one would like more to see Slackware shipped 2 months (give or take) earlier than it be stranded for any reason be it XFCE, KDE or any other major project be it even the unfortunate kernel for which we don't have any alternative so far but to "weather out" the many nuances to get our latest and greatest hardware supported.

I also remember when Slackware shipped with 2.2 and 2.4 kernels alongside each other, those where the days ...

Yes, I am defending them. I don't do that kind of installation myself because it's not what I want, but I can see that it's an ideal way for many others.

I have only been using Slackware for about two years, so I'm a novice compared with some of the people in this sub-forum, but I can tell you that part of the reason why I came to it so late was that I didn't much like the elitist atmosphere that hung around it. I got the impression that slackers thought they were a cut above other Linux users. In fact, people who don't know an awful lot about Linux can do a full Slackware install and they'll have a good-tempered stable system that will do everything they want and never throw a tantrum during an update (as Debian distros sometimes do). What's wrong with that?

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In my experience this community is very welcoming to beginners who show a desire/willingness to learn. Elitist don't typically want to raise others up to their level; we do.

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