SlackwareThis Forum is for the discussion of Slackware Linux.
Notices
Welcome to LinuxQuestions.org, a friendly and active Linux Community.
You are currently viewing LQ as a guest. By joining our community you will have the ability to post topics, receive our newsletter, use the advanced search, subscribe to threads and access many other special features. Registration is quick, simple and absolutely free. Join our community today!
Note that registered members see fewer ads, and ContentLink is completely disabled once you log in.
If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us. If you need to reset your password, click here.
Having a problem logging in? Please visit this page to clear all LQ-related cookies.
Get a virtual cloud desktop with the Linux distro that you want in less than five minutes with Shells! With over 10 pre-installed distros to choose from, the worry-free installation life is here! Whether you are a digital nomad or just looking for flexibility, Shells can put your Linux machine on the device that you want to use.
Exclusive for LQ members, get up to 45% off per month. Click here for more info.
I believe you are right on that remembrance, that he first advocates for latest 'stable', but he then advocates that if stable can't be used due to tools missing then use the latest longterm release. I was thinking in particular of the situation for 14.2 which doesn't have a compatible gcc for the 5.x kernels (longterm or stable). While the current gcc 5 used in 14.2 meets the requirements to build all the 4.x kernels. Thus my first question asking if PV has ever considered simply upgrading to a latest longterm kernel, such as maybe 4.14, since 4.19 will be EOL shortly.
I do see that the 5.4 kernel will be the next LTS, to be released hopefully in 2019, but its life span is very short Dec 2021, two years, compared to 4.14 which is January 2024.
Cheers BrianA_MN
I've been using 4.19 on slackware{,64}-14.2 for quite some time. I don't see upgrading to a later LTS kernel any problem for a slacker.
Getting rid of all the device driver and infrastructure improvements and switching back to the most problematic LTS kernel in history just for their predicted lifespans does not seem to be the best choice.
Well now, normally I won't add new features to a stable release, but I was actually entertaining that idea when the next 4.4.x fixing a CVE comes out. The option is getting tested in -current, seems like all the other distros have enabled it for a while... any objections?
No objection from me, and I'd go as far as suggesting that you ship a 4.19 kernel in 14.2. I have been using that and shipping it in Slint since five months with no issue reported (admittedly from a very small users base). [...] This, as firmware updates, could help people with a relatively new hardware not yet supported by 4.4.x to install Slackware 14.2.
For Slackware 14.2 32bit, a problem came along with the 4.4.172 kernel packages: for at least some computers the display system no longer worked. (The computer ran well otherwise.)
With all the earlier 4.4.x kernel packages which I used, the display system worked well. The 4.4.172 and earlier 4.4.x kernel packages were downloaded from one of the Slackware mirrors.
In addition to the problem I found, I have often read that the 4.4.x kernels do not work with a lot of newer hardware. I suggest it is time to go away from the 4.4.x kernel series.
I suggested 4.19.x because that's what Pat provides for -current , so the same kernels could be provided for both -current and 14.2: no more work but still would help users with new hardware and not wanting or able to run -current.
4.19 is fine but at least update the crda package of 14.2 with that of -current.
Is there any official date for the release of 5.3? I read somewhere that it should come out on September 9 or... 16. (I might have missed this info here in this thread - sorry)
I'd like to build & play with it, there are some really interesting developments in the networking section worth studying:
Is there any official date for the release of 5.3? I read somewhere that it should come out on September 9 or... 16.
No, there isn't an official date: it will come out when no showstoppers are detected anymore in the release candidates (rc's). There will be at least an rc7 and maybe even an rc8, so that would make it somewhere in the 2nd half of september (that is: the 16th, 23rd or even 30th). But it's all up to Linus, when he's satisfied it's ready for release.
Just FTR I'm using 5.0.20 on My Main (14.2) and 5.2.10 on another box with Current. Both work great and the Current Alt-Box even has a SoundBlaster Zx working.
Edit: FWIW I'm messing around with encryption on the Alt-Current box so I've had to at long last embrace initrd which I have always avoided. Mkiniterd worked just fine with the old 4.19.x kernel but I ran into problems on 5x kernels so I had to "make oldconfig" from the Huge kernel config and pare down a bit from there.
There are a few more interesting new features added in the 5.3 branch and because of these I'm beginning to really consider starting building and maintaining my own 5.3.x kernel (at least until Slackware provides a >= 5.3 by default). It's been a while since I've done that, it was up to and including the 2.4 - 2.6 "era", playing on the safe side ever since, only using the official kernels (branches for my own patching/re-compilations) Slackware is providing. Hope I won't burn my fingers, that's 5.3 will be solid/stable enough for some mission critical stuff I run.
Some other new features in 5.3 (I personally found interesting):
- compression support for the steadily increasing kernel firmware collection (/lib/firmware), which grew over 400MB lately: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux...3859d82c0857dc
LinuxQuestions.org is looking for people interested in writing
Editorials, Articles, Reviews, and more. If you'd like to contribute
content, let us know.
