Slackware-Current Hidden Activities
There hasn't been any public activities in the -Current tree. The last update committed was in September 6 and since then, there has been a lot of changes happening in the open source world. Some people might ask "Why wouldn't Slackware development tree gets updated lately?"
In the past, when i first learned about Slackware and started to follow Slackware-Current tree few years ago, i had the same feeling. The main reason why i pick Slackware-Current so that i will get the most bleeding-edge system filled with the latest version of every applications that are supported in Slackware. In fact, this is not what Slackware-Current idea is all about. Slackware-Current is the place where development of the next release of Slackware is being cooked, baked, tested by many people around the world to produce another great release of Slackware when the time come.
Even though Pat has gave a warning about using -Current as your base system, i find that -Current is as stable as the -Stable release. In fact, some fixes will be incorporated in -Current first and then in some cases it will be backported to -Stable (mostly deals with security fixes). Sometimes -Current does break some system when a faulty package being added, but it's just a special case. I only had problems with -Current when a new modular XOrg packages were introduced and since then, i never had any problems with -Current.
Back to the topic about Slackware-Current public activities. Even though the changelog doesn't show anything at all, it doesn't mean that the development of Slackware stopped. In fact, the Core team (Pat and Slackware Crews) works day to day to internally test the packages before releasing it to public to ensure that the packages won't break user's system when they try it.
Looking at the long inactivity of the -Current tree, i suspect a huge batch of updates is coming up with lots of new applications being updated to the latest version and probably some new applications will be added (for example if Pat decided to upgrade to KDE 4.7.1, then lots of new applications and libraries will need to be added into the repository). Be prepared for the big surprises by Pat.
Since i'm leaving on Monday until the next ten days for travelling with my new wife, i may not be able to post anything if the prize has been unveiled by Pat, so stay tune to the Changelogs if you want to see the big changes happening in Slackware-Current
In the past, when i first learned about Slackware and started to follow Slackware-Current tree few years ago, i had the same feeling. The main reason why i pick Slackware-Current so that i will get the most bleeding-edge system filled with the latest version of every applications that are supported in Slackware. In fact, this is not what Slackware-Current idea is all about. Slackware-Current is the place where development of the next release of Slackware is being cooked, baked, tested by many people around the world to produce another great release of Slackware when the time come.
Even though Pat has gave a warning about using -Current as your base system, i find that -Current is as stable as the -Stable release. In fact, some fixes will be incorporated in -Current first and then in some cases it will be backported to -Stable (mostly deals with security fixes). Sometimes -Current does break some system when a faulty package being added, but it's just a special case. I only had problems with -Current when a new modular XOrg packages were introduced and since then, i never had any problems with -Current.
Back to the topic about Slackware-Current public activities. Even though the changelog doesn't show anything at all, it doesn't mean that the development of Slackware stopped. In fact, the Core team (Pat and Slackware Crews) works day to day to internally test the packages before releasing it to public to ensure that the packages won't break user's system when they try it.
Looking at the long inactivity of the -Current tree, i suspect a huge batch of updates is coming up with lots of new applications being updated to the latest version and probably some new applications will be added (for example if Pat decided to upgrade to KDE 4.7.1, then lots of new applications and libraries will need to be added into the repository). Be prepared for the big surprises by Pat.
Since i'm leaving on Monday until the next ten days for travelling with my new wife, i may not be able to post anything if the prize has been unveiled by Pat, so stay tune to the Changelogs if you want to see the big changes happening in Slackware-Current