| Description |
Yes it's that time again! After many months of development and careful
testing, we are proud to announce the release of Slackware version 13.0!
We are sure you'll agree that the improvements made in this release more
than warrant the major version bump up from the 12.x series. We've done our
best to bring the latest technology to Slackware while still maintaining the
stability and security that you have come to expect. Slackware is well known
for it's simplicity and the fact that we try to bring software to you in the
condition that the authors intended.
Probably the biggest change is the addition of an official 64-bit port.
While the 32-bit (x86) version continues to be developed, this release brings
to you a complete port to 64-bit (x86_64). We know that many of you have
been waiting eagerly for this, and once you try it you'll see it was well
worth the wait.
Slackware 13.0 brings many updates and enhancements, among which you'll find
two of the most advanced desktop environments available today: Xfce 4.6.1,
a fast and lightweight but visually appealing and easy to use desktop
environment, and KDE 4.2.4, a recent stable release of the new 4.2.x series
of the award-winning K Desktop Environment. We continue to make use of HAL
(Hardware Abstraction Layer) which allows the system administrator to grant
use of various hardware devices according to users' group membership so that
they will be able to use items such as USB flash sticks, USB cameras that
appear like USB storage, portable hard drives, CD and DVD media, MP3 players,
and more, all without requiring sudo, the mount or umount command. Just plug
and play. Properly set up, Slackware's desktop should be suitable for any
level of Linux experience.
Slackware uses the 2.6.29.6 kernel bringing you advanced performance
features such as journaling filesystems, SCSI and ATA RAID volume support,
SATA support, Software RAID, LVM (the Logical Volume Manager), and
encrypted filesystems. Kernel support for X DRI (the Direct Rendering
Interface) brings high-speed hardware accelerated 3D graphics to Linux.
There are two kinds of kernels in Slackware -- the huge kernels, which
contain support for just about every driver in the Linux kernel. These are
primarily intended to be used for installation, but there's no real reason
that you couldn't continue to run them after you have installed. The
other type of kernel is the generic kernel, in which nearly every driver
is built as a module. To use a generic kernel you'll need to build an
initrd to load your filesystem module and possibly your drive controller
or other drivers needed at boot time, configure LILO to load the initrd at
boot, and reinstall LILO. See the docs in /boot after installing for more
information. Slackware's Linux kernels come in both SMP and non-SMP types
now. The SMP kernel supports multiple processors, multi-core CPUs,
HyperThreading, and about every other optimization available. In our own
testing this kernel has proven to be fast, stable, and reliable. We
recommend using the SMP kernel even on single processor machines if it
will run on them.
From the beginning, Slackware has offered a stable and secure Linux
distribution for UNIX veterans as well as an easy-to-use system for
beginners. Slackware includes everything you'll need to run a powerful
server or workstation. Each Slackware package follows the setup and
installation instructions from its author(s) as closely as possible,
offering you the most stable and easily expandable setup.
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