Distributions

Thu Nov 9 18:16:50 CST 2006
Q: Hey, what's the deal with -current?
A: Renovations are underway to the toolchain (gcc, glibc, binutils, etc),
       and it makes little sense to update what is essentially Slackware 11.0
       only to do the work all over again once the new toolchain is ready.
       In addition, these things aren't going as smoothly as anticipated.
       I'd like to put the NPTL version of glibc into /lib and the LinuxThreads
       version into /lib/obsolete/linuxthreads (since some old binaries are
       going to need them), but doing this prevents the use of a 2.4 kernel.
       Perhaps it's finally time to drop support for Linux 2.4? Personally,
       I'd rather not as 2.4 is more forgiving of flaky hardware and thus
       tends to get better uptimes (at least on the servers I run ;-).
       Comments about this issue are welcomed.
       glibc-2.5 has also been having some problems with locale support here
       that need to be investigated and dealt with. I'd rather base the glibc
       in Slackware on an official glibc release, but using the development
       repo is also something under (slight) consideration if it works
       better.

Mon Nov 20 14:31:25 CST 2006
Thanks to everyone who provided valuable feedback on the question below.  It
looks as if Slackware -current (future 12.0?) is going to charge into 2.6-only
territory, but it will be a conservative "charge".  :-)  The overwhelming
consensus is that the 2.6 series is now more than stable enough for production
use.  Some folks expressed concern over the loss of Linux 2.4.x compatibility,
but they were a definite minority.  Some suggested maintaining two -current
branches -- one following 2.4 and the other 2.6.  The solution that'll be
taken concerning 2.4.x will be to make Slackware 11.0 better maintained than
simply security updates.  It should see some other non-security updates as
well (perhaps the introduction of an /updates directory?), and will be a long
lived OS for those who swear by the stability of the 2.4.x kernel series.
Meanwhile, 2.4.x compatibility features (such as the, er, mess? going on in
the startup scripts) will be steadily eliminated in -current to focus on the
best possible 2.6.x support.  With a lot of work, we should be able to make
the next Slackware release an excellent choice for both servers and desktops.
Again -- thanks for all the input!  :-)

Sat Mar 17 19:14:35 CDT 2007
  Happy St. Patrick's Day!  :-)
  This is more-or-less stable (functionally), but there's still a lot of
  package splitting and other rearranging and adding to be done, but it's
  time for the Slackware community to see how far we've gotten.  If the
  luck o' the Irish is with us, it'll be a fairly short alpha/beta/rc
  period from here.  Well, have fun!