Labels, my dude. LABELS. The terms are interchangeable and which term a given user prefers is going to depend on which distros they have worked with. People will always look at something new through the lense of what they already know.

• Arch users will look at -current like a rolling release branch in the style of Arch. Because that's more or less what it is.
• Fedora users will compare -current to their Rawhide "development branch".

Technically you are right though. In Slackware nobody calls -current a rolling release. And given that Slackware was here before everybody else I'm incline to say that rolling releases are actually just dev/testing trees, rather than the other way around.

rolling-release does not mean "unstable"

The "testing" branch of Archlinux is probably what is closest to slackware-current (as well as fedora rawhide)

fedora defines it very well
https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/releases/rawhide/

This can also be applied to slackware-current

1 members found this post helpful.

Yeah, well, I'm old enough to remember this:

Has this advice from Patrick changed?

3 members found this post helpful.

There is also the concept of "stable rolling release". I know only one example of that (but maybe there are others), which is openSUSE Tumbleweed. This article highlights (from the author's POV) the differences between rolling and stable releases and why he prefers the former.

Sorry, but again "Rolling release" is not opposed to "Stable release", but to "Fixed release"

All those people who jumped on -current without having a business with beta-testing are at least half to be blamed for those 6 years of development of Slackware 15.0 , because the Slackware development slowed down to an "acceptable stability" for their sake.

IF the people would refuse to understand that -current is not a "rolling release" and they do not mind their own business, I predict that this time we will get Slackware 15.1 no sooner as the year of 2030. If we are lucky.

I for one, I wish our BDFL to go wild on development and to break hard every month the -current - and in half a year we will see who is capable to survive on Slackware-current.

1 members found this post helpful.

Yes, BUT there is no such thing as a "rolling release" in Slackware. Only stable releases and a development tree.

1 members found this post helpful.

Or "regular release" as Richard Brown has written with the meaning "has specific versions ... released in a regular cadence" (which does not apply to Slackware as there is no regular cadence). What I meant is that a rolling release, as a fixed or regular release, can provide a stable system, in the sense that the frequent updates do not cause disruptions of the services it runs or cause issues that can not be quickly and easily solved (possibly rolling back a problematic update). Indeed there can be exceptions, but backups are intended for that as well as for hardware failures, regardless of the "release model".

You are evil @LuckyCyborg!
Isn't it broken enough -current even now (kernel, Postfix)?
If means GRUB, systemd with compatibility mode for SysV, I will still be a beta tester.
So because we, beta testers are testing the new packages, it's our fault that BDFL can't make the decision to release a new stable?

We already have grub
And udev & elogind for compatibility mode for SysV
And, yes, I'm still a beta tester too

1 members found this post helpful.

Adrenaline

5 members found this post helpful.

And newer versions for packages.
Did you forget about 14.2?

For me, it provides many updates to packages which I was previously maintaining myself on 15.0 which I need to build and run the GNOME desktop. It majorly decreased the amount of packages I had to maintain myself and the time I was investing which allowed me to focus on what I wanted to do.

Sure, some would say "don't run Slackware if you want to use GNOME then", and you're partially correct. But we have many others maintaining and contributing GNOME versions for Slackware outside of Pat's tree, so that point is moot.

I use Slackware because it's the distro I feel at home with and enjoy using. I actually like maintaining it, and if it breaks, I find joy in fixing it (or trying to). Maintaining a desktop that's as large as GNOME and completely unsupported isn't for the faint of heart. That being said, I've run Slackware for over 20 years and I think I can handle myself. To each their own though, if no one ran -current, how would the bugs get fixed? You expect Pat to notice and find every thing on his own? Do you really want to get a 15.1 or not? Others input is needed, it's the only way to ensure it gets better and isn't broken for someone. We may not find things right away, but things will be found and the next release will benefit from it.

I'm not saying for everyone to go jump on -current. If 15.0 works for your use case, please stay there. But Linux offers choice, and I'm willing to bet, my choice (and others) to run -current will help to make the next release more stable for you.

I keep the important things on stable, like my server. But for home use and for making sure I can run the latest GNOME Desktop (among other things), right now -current is that place. Would I normally run -current? Nope. I like being lazy. -current is a fast moving train, if you don't have the energy and drive to keep up with it, you will have a painful experience. But if you can manage updates and staying in sync with the repo, you'll find it's rarely broken and quite an excellent bleeding edge system to use.

2 members found this post helpful.

Permit me to disagree! Hard disagree!

In fact, you help no one! Because treating the development tree of Slackware as a "rolling release" has no other result than delaying the next release as demonstrated by the last development cycle: more "civilians" are on the development battlefront, more slow this development becomes.

And I think that over 5 years of development for Slackware 15.0 is more than enough. I do not want Slackware 15.1 to be released on year of 2030 because you want a "rolling release" in Slackware - which does not exists, BTW...

So, be gentle and do a favor to everyone: either use the latest stable release of Slackware (yes, there's also GNOME4 for it) or go to a true rolling release distribution, like is openSUSE Tumbleweed.

Nope, there's no such excuse.

Slackware 15.0 is new enough to be decently modern. And in the end, I for one, I can build myself the latest Postfix in -stable, so certainly you can do too.

So, you want to be repeated the story of 14.2 and to see 15.1 in the year of 2030?