This is not as important as one might think, as long as updates keep flowing in (which they do). For 'ports,' there is sbopkg which keeps the software that is not included in the OS install up to date. Then there is pkgs.org and pkgsrc.org. And in a rare case if I need the bleeding edge version of something and is not available as a package from anywhere I can always install it by hand - Slackware is highly tolerant towards software that does not come in the form of a package.
