I've been running Slackware 14.1 stable for at least 2 years on an old P4 MSI Motherboard VIA P4M800 + VT8237 Chipset based PM8M2-V .

Using 1 GB Ram Shared Video.

Quite responsive yet a little slow but not annoyingly so.

Question is, with the new, larger kernel should I expect a hinderingly sluggish performance? I tried to configure EVOLUTION Mail but found 4 0r 5 file requirements were looking for newer versions ( 4.0 >= , found 3.8...).

So I will wait for 14.2 ... I'm tempted to go with the current branch but I never hear one way or other if current "breaks" , and if so, with what frequency? Currently only the old Slacker box is up and running . The NVidea went bad in my old Dell laptop.

I suppose when 14.2 is released I'll try the Slackware 32 current branch -- but I would appreciate your thoughts and sugestions especially if you are already running 14.1 current on a dinosaur like mine.

As far as ancient hardware goes, I have no such machines. I can say that -current is very stable right now. I am patiently awaiting the next development cycle of -current. I have no experience running -current right after a stable release. I used to run Debian Sid for many years, which I realize is not Slackware, but all development branches are similar.

If you subscribe to mailing lists, follow recent forum posts, pay close attention to the change logs, you will have no breakage. With each batch of updates be sure to pay close attention before you do anything.

If you have a spare 20GB ofHDD space why not run both and have a common data partition. I started with a stable install for work, and current on the same HDD as the upgrade path.
I would then change to using current as my work system once I had it configured with all my extra applications.
As this current has been baking in the oven for 2 years, I have 2 versions of current loaded..however I have not used the backup as it is very stable for my purposes. Slackware betas are as stable as Windows systems.

Thanks. The consensus so far seems to indicate that the Slackware current tends to be very reliable.(no promises as understood).

You could always give SlackLive a try. It is developed by one of the core Slackware contributors and will give you a live system based on -current. You can also enable it to be persistent, so it can save your configuration to the thumbdrive. If everything goes well, it can also install it right to your harddrive.

http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/slac...esting-please/

I tried SlackLive as Live DVD and it loaded but was way too slow to be functional. May do better as an install ... but will wait on it for now.

I found Puppy Linux's Slacko and it did very well overall and could make do in a pinch.

Once 14.2 is out I'll probably nuke the box .... try new stuff a bit ... then settle back into Slackware giving the -current branch a go. Regardless, I plan on not using KDE at all. Mate and i3wm and occasionally Blackbox do well enough for me.


Thanks again .

Try the XFCE SlackLive. And also remember, running live from a DVD/CD or USB stick will be much slower than installed to a hard drive. I run current on some pretty weak hardware, 1.6GHz, 2GB Ram laptop and with XFCE it runs fine. KDE is way to slow with this hardware.

SlackLive XFCE:

32bit: http://bear.alienbase.nl/mirrors/sla...ce-current.iso

64 bit: http://bear.alienbase.nl/mirrors/sla...ce-current.iso