No but if you don't stay up to date you'll turn archaic and die like Windows 95, 98, NT, 2000, and Me. And countless other programs that are no longer updated. This even includes some distros of Linux that no longer exist. You have to stay current, or in Slackware's case, moderatly current so that users can use new hardware and use updated and better versions of programs.

I kind of agree with marsques. I run Slackware 10.2 full time, and i'm very satisfied.

Whenever a new release of some app is made (wine for an example) i'll go look at it, get the source code.

I used to run Slackware Current, but since i changed to 10.2, my system has been far mor stable, and i still have the newest versions of my favourite apps. So i wont upgrade right away.

Like I said in my original post I've got a spare hard drive (thats much bigger than my current 40gig with slack 10.2)

If a new release was or is expected soon then I wouldn't go through the whole install process with 10.2 when I could just use a newer release, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with 10.2 but I wish I knew how much i was going to enjoy using Slackware, I wouldn't have installed it on my aging 40gig WD that I mainley use for trying out different distros.

Thanks for the replies

There's no definite answer, but from the changelog for Slackware-current 24th April, 2006, I am inclined to conclude, that Pat V. is currently finishing some tests with kernel 2.6.16.9, and considers to make 11.0 the first Slackware release base kernel 2.6.x. Another indication for 11.0 to appear soon is that authorised resellers are advertising it, already. Hower, there's no defintion, what "soon" is.

I may be wrong, though.

gargamel

I don't mind waiting for the next version of Slackware, whenever Pat chooses to release the next version of Slackware is fine with me, the only thing I really wish is that he would include support for XFS and JFS in the default kernel for installing Slackware on, not just Reiserfs and ext2/3.

Whenever 11 is ready to be released, I am excited to have an official Slackware release to be based on the 2.6 kernel!

Agreed. A new version of Slackware based on the 2.6x kernel will be awesome. On the latest intel changelog April 24th there is the label "pre-release."
However, Patrick will release 11.0 when it is ready:-)

It would be nice to also have native support for larger amounts of ram, and even though Slackware is server oriented the inclusion of open office and firefox would be cool (although niether is hard to install after the fact)

also I did see mention somewhere of a single DVD iso ... Awesome !!

I agree about OO, but firefox is included in Slack 10.2. I'm typing this via Firefox from a fresh Slack 10.2 install.

I'm also looking forward to 11. I think I might buy a CD (or DVD) set this time instead of downloading. I've used it enough to know I want to continue to use it, I should probably support the development/developer.

I have been doing this since 9 and I suggest everyone do it.

(1) Yes, OOo would be welcome, but there there are some issues with it that make it a bit difficult to smoothly integrate it with whatever the users chose as their desktop. I have seen OOo packages/installations that were smoothly integrated with Gnome, others that looked like a perfect KDE app, and some that had all the functions working. But none that was good in all these respects. And: How do you get it in your language? Example: When you install the OOo package from LinuxPackages.NET, there's no support for my mother tongue. And for sending faxes I can, of course, follow the instructions to include a fax device in the printer setup, but either I have to use OOo's internal fax device support which has never worked well at my site, or I can indirect the fax output to KDEfaxprint, which works just fine, in principal with one annyoing snag: OOo brings up its own dialog for entering the target fax number, before KDEfaxprint is called. Even worse: When I type a fax number in the OOo dialog it is not passe on to KDEfaxprint, so I have to type it a second time. A final point for Pat V. to avoid it so far, is certainly space. For the same reason he has already dropped Gnome, and is planning on dropping Java (the SDK, at least).
Don't get me wrong, I use OOo daily, but I can see there are reasons for a distribution maintainer for not starting to battle with it.
And to Ken Zalewski, who made the LP package: In case, you read this, your packages are great, I use many of them, and the points are mentioned are certainly not your fault!

(2) Firefox is, to my knowledge, not included in the original 10.2 CD release. However, Pat V. made officially available at the same time it found its way into current, because he acknowledged there was big demand for it. Because he is not only the dictator, but also benvolent. 8-)

(3) XFS and JFS support in the default kernels, would be nice, indeed, as long as it won't hurt the ability of Slack to run on older hardware (by making the kernel too big, eg).

gargamel

It is included in the original release.

Eric

XFS alone would add around 200K to any kernel -it's one of the largest features available, at least for the 2.4 kernel.

http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/...ture-sizes.txt
shows a few more stats.

I think XFS would be worth it though. I use XFS on my current machines and it runs alot better than ext3 or reiserfs (in many, but not all, situations).

Strange, on that link it lists JFS2 as well as JFS, but I see no such filesystem supported in the current stable release of 2.6. When did IBM release JFS2 to the open source community? Or did they even do that?