I was referring to the accusations above that the OP must be a troll, or that a previous post about liking the Slackware community somehow invalidates the OPs criticism or means it's reasonable to call his/her motives into question.

The Slackware home page greets its visitors with a message celebrating the release of Slackware 14.2 in July 2016. Now, we all know that a lot has happened since then, but 4+ years between releases is pretty unusual for a distribution that's being actively maintained.

As for this causing problems, there are reasons why so many of us are running -current. And I don't think it's because we all secretly wish Slackware was a rolling release.

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You mis-interpreted the message then. ALl kgha said that the OP of this current topic had a diametrically opposed opinion of Slackware two weeks ago. As evidenced by the tpoic he linked to. Whether other people call the text of the OP trolling or not, is a matter of personal taste. They do not call the OP a troll.

Slackware will never be a rolling release btw. Rolling releases are an unstable nightmare.

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Just as there are reasons many more of us are using stable. Without any problems.

This is the problem - some people think theirs are the only opinions Mr Volkerding has to listen to and weigh up. But they're not; some people prefer stable, prefer KDE 4 and prefer Xfce 4.12.

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Arch is systemd, so not acceptable to those who are philosophically opposed to it (likely many slackers fall into this category, IMO YMMV). Gentoo is source based: which is problematic if you only have some low end laptop rather than some monster threadripper build machine that can easily and quickly rebuild stuff.

Other options are certainly available for those who feel that slackware no longer meets their needs for whatever reason.

"Why not use something else?", and "what that something else might be? are questions whose answer will be specific to the individual.

I think it's fair to say that some folks are now using current, not because they want to help with testing (which is all it is really intended for), but because the age of 14.2 has forced them to. IMO, this is not a good situation. However, whether they're best served by sticking with it in the hope that things go back to normal with 15.0, or by looking elsewhere, is a decision for them alone to make.

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Another vote for stable. It does what I need it to do.

I want Pat to do what he needs to do to put together a most excellent 15, like he did with 14.2.

KDE4 is fine for me, but I’d rather run Plasma, and it sounds to me like it will go into 15, but I can wait - until it’s ready.

I’m using -current in the form of SlackwareARM and Xfce on Raspberry Pi 4, but -current only because it’s not possible, or at least a big hassle, to use some form of 14.2 on it.

I’m using Xfce 4.14 on OpenBSD 6.7, and it mostly works well with most changes under the hood and invisible to the user.

However, there has been some weirdness there: screen freezes that I “fixed“ by turning off compositing (which is on by default starting with 4.14), and catfish doesn’t launch (I’ve looked at the errors, but haven’t gotten to fixing them.)

That’s the kind of thing I haven’t run into with Xfce on Slackware and expect not to. With OpenBSD, they make the packages available, but you’re on your own if you run into issues like I have, whereas on Slackware, I understand that the DEs are integrated and tested thoroughly.

TKS

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Okay.

Slackware is better. Arch? Gentoo? Just no.

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+1

Whether reputation has slipped is debatable, but yes, probably to some degree.

Yes, the 4 year development cycle is causing anxiety for some people.

I don't know how many people have moved to using Current as a daily driver. My guess is a few users but most Slackers remain content with 14.2.

Would be nice to be informed what is delaying Current from adding Plasma and Xfce 4.14, which are needed for official betas and release candidates, but long-time Slackers know to patient.

Me? If Slackware disappeared I would not move to source based or rolling distros.

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Assuming you're not trolling, I think Slackware could benefit from a rolling release, more for the people who want/need constant updates for things such as hardware. (I'm thinking of gamers, here, with mesa updates.) That way we've got stable for those who need things rock-solid. For those who need new, they've got the rolling one. And for those brave souls who live on the edge, there's current, which could truly be a testing environment.

Thing is though, that Slackware is not a source distro. That is, if you downloaded the source tree from Slackware, you'd likely have a hard time building it yourself, since it's evolved over months organically. I'm not entirely sure how one would maintain a balance between stable and current, though.

Arch is MUCH less stable than Slackware-Current.

Gentoo? I'm not subjecting my machines to the wear and tear from all that constant compiling.

Truth. I used ARch for a sum total of 6 months, and was fixing crap 99% of the time. I need my computer to boot the first time, every time.

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It'd be a nightmare to try and support a rolling release from a 3rd-party repo perspective (just look at the work that ponce does in maintaining his repo for -current). Plus the extra burden on Pat to support -current and a rolling release? It'd probably slow down development on -current.

I'm also not sure what you'd like to see different in a rolling release version of Slackware vs what's already being done in -current. As others have said, -current tends to be more stable than Arch.

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Do you like multilib because if 32 bit is removed then we may not have it because most of the multilib packages come from the 32 bit version of Slackware.

Slackware is known for stability. There are people still using those older versions because they meet their needs, not everyone needs the latest, and instead they need something that will reliably work for years. Also with a rolling release people would be having to rebuild their packages all the time and not everyone is willing to do that and issues would cause costly downtime.

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This thread is not accurately titled, IMHO. It isn't really about Slackware's future but more about "Why isn't Slackware more like X, Y, or Z?" One might even consider that under his breath is also added "...which I understand better and like more". This is why some see OP as a troll when really he or she just doesn't understand or agree with the most fundamental design principles of Slackware, Official or -Current.

14.2, for most use cases is NOT hopelessly out of date. Even it's initially installed kernel is not much behind Debian's Stable kernel (4.4.14 vs/ 4.19.0) and it is far easier to update Slack's kernel to whatever you want or need than Debian's (assuming basic Slackware skills ) -Current is not a rolling release unless it can be described as one expected to break, but rarely does, while Arch IS one expected not to break but often does OK Joking aside, they are not the same.

As far as I can tell this is just a continuation of the typical "Distro Wars" and the solution is easy - Try any distro hard for a month and if you don't try to force it into whatever you're already used to and you still don't like it... move on. Simple.

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provocation: The act of provoking, inciting or annoying someone into doing something

at least they're happening less frequently than current updates