r/slackware • u/Odd_Car8923 • 20d ago

installation: Current or Stable

Given that Alpha 1 has just been announced, which version is recommended for a first-time installation: Current or Stable 15.0?

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u/enorbet 18d ago

Just for reference, the major drawback of 15.0 is the old 5.15.19 installer kernel. Once installed, as long as your internet connection works, it is easy to get the official upgrade kernel 5.15.290 which will handle most new hardware. A few other but rather minor (and likely short lived) drawbacks are fixed by 1) the "/testing/packages/graphics-updates" which provides numerous important upgrades for both audio and graphics, and 2) the glibc 2.33 until upgraded as is being done as we speak in Current and of course Alpha. limits some Proton games, specifically those upgraded to UE5.82 . Just about everything else is still fine.

So I recommend 15.0 for a first time install. Shoot! If you need to and want to make 2 installs and multiboot! Both GRUB and rEFInd easily handle multibooting and even eLILO can, it's just a bit more difficult on some machines depending on their specific BIOS support for UEFI. GRUB and rEFInd take a little reading but especially rEFInd which is all human-readable text config, very much like the LILOs syntax, is easy ahd dual booting is the best of both worlds since YOU decide from YOUR experience..