I was curious how many there were like you. I thought maybe looking at the LQ join date might give a hint, but I think some (many?) join LQ while using some other distros, so I quickly gave up on drawing any conclusions.

I, for one, am thrilled to be stable once again. And this time I won't need medication!

Is something which makes you believe that no other people than me started to use Slackware in the last 5 years?

Not at all, in fact I assume that is the case. I was speaking of trying to quantify it via the dates of members joining LQ after the release of 14.2, which I quickly determined was not a logical assumption.

I wonder how many folks will be staying with -current after 15.0 is released. I am one of those. I've been using -current since version 13.1.

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Not me at least. For me using -current is a real torture. Each upgrade breaks every single dependency of anything I've built locally and it takes me a few months of "libfoo.so.6 not found" to recover. I was about to quit slackware after 25 years just because of this pain. 14.2 is not maintained anymore (let's be serious, even vulnerabilities in openssl are not fixed anymore), and -current having been on -current over the last two years showed me only the dark side of slackware, that overall remains the best distro I've worked with, but which has been terribly painful over these years. So I'm really impatient to see 15.0 tomorrow and know that I'll have a few years of maintenance back.

It becomes really critical to fix a release periodicity. Especially for distros, there's always something important that gets released the week after a release, it's not possible to have to adapt to other software's pacing. Periodic releases engage more of the community into testing and upgrading. It also gets more users of -current because all those who would have like to have imminent version X or Y of foo will upgrade to -current and those are never the same so overall you get more feedback and it helps stabilizing what's going to be released.

This has done wonders on plenty other software, including the linux kernel and other distros, there is no reason it cannot work here.

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A stable release means Slackware can be my desktop OS again.

As the desktop is the means by which I reach every other machine I don't want unnecessary[*] change there any more than I do on a server.

[*] and obviously this is purely subjective!

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Same here. Long ago I tried to stay on -current but stopped that experiment with the next stable release. I'm now on 14.2. It is surely a bit outdated but hey, I even resisted the temptation to install qt5 from SBo .

In addition to having to recompile my stuff all the time, I am also remotely maintaining my parents' computers. They surely want a stable system so I don't want to split my time with a -current here and stable there.

On the other hand, now that 15.0 is near, a few weeks ago I installed -current on an old spare computer and I compiled the software I need from SBo using ponce's git repo. I'm keeping it up-to-date and rebuilding the SBo packages when necessary. So when 15.0 finally arrives, I'll have my SBo packages ready to install .

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Ditto.

I chose -current more or less by accident: when switching to a 64bit machine six years ago, I installed Eric's Liveslak with multilib and there I was.

I can see the huge advantages of an up to date stable version, not least for people having servers running and dependent on stability above all. As a single user, my mileage is different. Over the years I've learnt to live with -current, to keep tab on the changelog and to fix my 3rd party packages when necessary (e.g. when .so version bumps occur - but they sometimes appear in -stable as well).

BTW, wtarreau's statement "Each upgrade breaks every single dependency of anything I've built locally" seems to me a little bit exaggerated. His system might of course be completely different from my own, but I have locally built packages dating back to 2016 installed that still works well.

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I have been using current since AlienBob's version of x86_64. The greatest issues I've had were self-inflicted. Sometimes, Ive had to wait for NVIDIA to catch up on kernel releases, but that's no biggie.Its usually only a few days.

I added -current alongside 14.2 in multiboot when ktown was added. I wanted to start helping with testing and reporting. That’s not feasible for everyone, but I have unlimited download and could make the time.

I’ve been of little help - since only one thing has broken for me since (a temporary blank screen problem in kernel 5.10.something.) That’s damn stable for a “testing” version.

My original intention was to remove -current once 15.0 came along, but I’ve reconsidered and will keep it to continue testing, although only update whenever a security update comes available for packages I use. That’s an update frequency I will be able to live with - I still have unlimited download but my available time is about to become shorter.

-current aka 15.0 RC3 is running nicely for me, although I’m with Pat that 5.15.15 does have a nice ring to it (but not necessary- 5.15.14 is working just fine here.)

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We surely could use a release - I'm shilling that Slackware's not dead left and right, and a release would certainly bolster my efforts

Other than that, I admit i skipped the stormy weathers of -current but am running an so-so updated partition i boot into every once in a while - it is quite usable for work as is already!

The RC3 is more than a welcome news - but we should really all jump onto the wagon and stress the thing for any last minute bugs and errors!

Heck, maybe even run an clean install wouldn't hurt the effort?

I will be happily moving to 15.

I have no crystal ball, but it would not surprise me to see a shiny new stable version giving Pat and the team an opportunity to implement some changes to -current that could be potentially more disruptive than usual. If that's the case, I will be content to watch from the sidelines - although setting up a multi-boot that includes -current and a couple other distros may be fun too.

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I first started using Slackware relatively recently (last January), and hardware considerations meant it had to be -current. I plan to keep a -current virtual machine for testing my SlackBuilds and switching everything else over to 15.0; very much looking forward to it!

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We all have different experiences. With 245 "compat32" tagged packages, 143 packages of my own making, 18 "alien" packages and 1 "mt" package, my experience is 180 out from yours. I rarely have issues with this. I watch for specific "version bumps" that I know will cause issues and rebuild/upgrade as needed. Many upgrades have no effect at all on my installed third party packages. Same applies to my laptop which as a similar yet not the same set of packages minus the multilib packages. With Alien Bob's "compat" packages I can take my time with rebuilds/upgrades for those effected packages.

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We all have different experiences is absolutely true. I have trouble when on -current because I can't tell when the "upgraded" current package will break some packaged I've built locally. Share your discernment of when to "upgrade" while on current, and when to "stay" at current level. I like that Pat is saying we're at RC3 and frozen, but then he throws in that 5.15.15 might sound nice. Well a year ago wasn't there disruption from a certain 5.10.y causing blank screens when added to current? (it's rhetorical). This is why I stay on stable, give me the security fixes for packages and kernels. Give me the other upgrades and rebuilds as options. If there was one thing I'd hope for in the next release it would be that slackpkg would add a command to filter for only security upgrades, like upgrade-security. Now I have to read the change log (both Slackware's and Kernel.org) in detail to look for security changes, write the packages down, then start slackpkg upgrade and only name the security impact packages. I utilize five to seven year old hardware. I don't need the latest package for my workflow to be efficient. I realize some do need the latest and slickest, and Pat needs to continue to make decisions as more of Linux slide away from the UNIX philosophy of one package doing one thing well, to accommodate the changing Linux world. Even when stable is declared, I know that KDE will have changes and upgrades because that's what happened with 14.2. But off this side point, back to my initial question, would you share your discernment process for when to upgrade under -current?

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