Slackware community is very active nowadays, and that's for a reason. They are waiting for the big update coming to Slackware, which is the new Plasma 5 and XFCE. It has been requested for so long after -current start moving, but Pat hasn't made the change until 2020 when big basic components such as Qt5 went in and many followed up.

There were some distractions along the way, such as PAM taking some time to test (it was initially planned for a day or two in testing/), but at the end it was a smooth migration. I barely notice any changes since all the changes happening under the hood and it works well both in my MATE and Cinnamon project (basically for Cinnamon since i already have PAM installed, but not as part of the core packages. It just sit there as a requirement for Cinnamon-screensaver).

For next Plasma 5 and XFCE, there are some another changes needed for it to go smoothly and that's UPower and elogind. Slackware 14.2 up to -current is still using the old UPower which is already deprecated for some time, but since it's related to many other libraries/applications, Pat kept them until it's time to move on with the rest of the projects and i believe it's time. Newer UPower is needed by Plasma 5, XFCE, mate-power-manager 1.24 (it's still at 1.22 for now due to this constraints) and better battery support in Cinnamon.

• Cinnamon 4.6 Early Preview

  Few days ago i saw that Cinnamon 4.6.0 has been released on GitHub and as usual, developers will still release a couple more releases before they mark it stable, but i have made some changes to the SlackBuild scripts and push it to master branch for those who are eager to try the new Cinnamon 4.6.x series.

  I believe this version will be used in the next Linux Mint 20 which will be released in June, but i want Slackware-Current users to try this version first

• Plamo 7.2 リリース

  従来同様、4.7Gのサイズに収まるようにDVD用は2枚組みです。他に USB メモリからインストールする用に DVD 2 枚分をまとめてひとつにした USB 用イメージがあります（_usb.iso）。

• Chrome 83 Beta: Cross-site Scripting Protection, Improved Form Controls, and Safe Cross-origin Resource Sharing

  Unless otherwise noted, changes described below apply to the newest Chrome beta channel release for Android, Chrome OS, Linux, macOS, and Windows. Learn more about the features listed here through the provided links or from the list on ChromeStatus.com. Chrome 83 is beta as of April 16, 2020.

• Chrome 83 Beta Rolls Out With Better Form Controls, Barcode Detection API

  Following the release of Chrome 81 earlier this month, Chrome 83 is now in beta with Google having skipped Chrome 82 due to delays / internal issues.

  Chrome 83 Beta is out today with trusted types for DOM manipulation, improved form controls that provide much nicer looking HTML input form controls by default, new origin trials, a barcode detection API is introduced as part of their shape detection API, various WebRTC improvements, and other changes.

• Chromium 81 – and the new build process for Slackware 14.2

  Google released version 81 of their Chromium browser sources last week, after spending a lot of effort to bring security patches to the 80.x releases in the weeks before. As said before, Google is going to skip the 82 release entirely because of the staffing challenges resulting from the Corina crisis, and will jump straight to release 83 somewhere mid-May.
  I uploaded packages for chromium 81.0.4044.92 a few days ago – but those were only for Slackware-current.

  I found it impossible to compile the latest Chromium 81 code on Slackware 14.2 and I had been trying for days. Yesterday I finally succeeded after more than a week of trying since the sources were released. I can not sit behind my computer for long, but that was not too much of a setback in this particular case. I kept running into new compiler or linker errors, then I would think of a fix, set the box to compile again and had to wait for hours to see the result… and lie down in the meantime. For an entire week, I met failure upon failure.

• Slackware Going for PAM

  It has been requested by many people in the past, many debates have been sprung due to this discussions, and finally in 2020 Patrick is taking PAM in -current (still in /testing for now, but hopefully will be merged in the main tree in the next few days or hours). It's a long journey to get PAM gets included and some people have been working on this as a side project, namely Vincent Batts, Robby Workman, and Ivandi. Their work is finally paid off and next Slackware release will have PAM support out-of-the-box, so people in the corporate can start working on AD (Active Directory) on top of Slackware.

• PAM landed in Slackware today, also new Plasma5 packages available

  What does that mean? Not much actually. Your Slackware will keep functioning as before. The new functionality offered by the Pluggable Authentication Modules is not directly visible.

  [...]

  Download the KDE-5_20.02 from the usual location at https://slackware.nl/alien-kde/current/ or one of its mirrors like http://slackware.uk/people/alien-kde/current/ .
  Check out the README file in the root of the repository for detailed installation or upgrade instructions.

  Development of Plasma5 is tracked in git: https://git.slackware.nl/ktown/ .

  A new Plasma5 Live ISO is going to be available soon at https://slackware.nl/slackware-live/latest/ (rsync://slackware.nl/mirrors/slackware-live/latest/) with user/pass being “live/live” as always. I am still working on an improved ‘setup2hd‘ and depending on the amount of work (and setbacks) I may decide to leave the ‘old’ setup2hd script in the ISO for now.