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Slackware 13.1 Released

Posted by kdawson on from the taking-up-the-slack dept.

Several readers made sure we are aware that Slackware 13.1 release is out. Here's the list of mirrors. "Slackware 13.1 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 4.4.3, a recent stable release of the new 4.4.x series of the award-winning KDE desktop environment."

7 of 155 comments (clear)

  1. wow version 13.1 thats quite a lot of slackin by Rivalz · · Score: 3, Interesting

    cheers to the developers. they really work their slacks off.

  2. After a half dozen distros by by+(1706743) · · Score: 5, Interesting

    on 4 architectures, I still have a special place in my heart for Slackware (though I use Arch and Debian on my main boxes now). Great distribution -- I even sent Pat "The Man" Volkerding home-made cookies when he was sick.

    As the adage goes, Give a man Debian, and he'll learn Debian. Give a man SUSE, and he'll learn SUSE. But give a man Slackware, and he'll learn Linux. I certainly picked up more *NIX tricks from Slack than the other distros combined.

    1. Re:After a half dozen distros by ChipMonk · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Give a man Slackware, and he'll go right back to Microsoft. Good lord those were terrible experiences the two or three times I tried Slackware.

      Speak for yourself. In 1998, I was dual-booting Windows 95 and Linux. When my Windows caught the Chernobyl virus, I lost my partition tables, and the rest of my data with it. I went 100% Linux, Slackware at the time, and never looked back. I did explore other Linux distros over a 4-year period (2002-2006), but eventually I came back to Slackware. You never forget your first love.

      Amazingly enough, in 2001, I had set up my parents with a Mandrake system. It was my mother's idea, based on my high praise for Linux's transparency and comparative stability. I tried to talk her out of it, but when she pointed out that it wouldn't crash as often as Windows (making lighter support work for me), I was convinced. Today, she uses Fedora 12 and loves it.

      Even back in 1998, I could see that there were great possibilities and ideas that could make a wonderful OS, and Linux was a lot closer to them than Windows was. Now, twelve years later, I still haven't seen any reason to allow a Microsoft OS under my roof.

  3. I love me some Slack by Riddler+Sensei · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I started using Slackware when I began college, and I still use it today. I'm sort of a "medium" user. I can work the scripts and the config files, and I even compiled some custom kernels in the past. But I'm not a CS guy - I majored in music. Even I, with my liberal arts degree, find Slackware delightful to use and I appreciate it's lack of fluff and its overall feel of being MY computer.

    I salute you Pat. May you keep on Slacking.

  4. Re:No GNOME then? by Excelcia · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Unfortunately, Slackware hasn't carried GNOME since 2005. Mr. Volkerding dropped it because it was "too much work". There are other third party GNOME packagers for Slackware. However, GNOME isn't just a desktop - it needs support from underneath X for some things, so any set of GNOME packages makes changes to Slackware that are more or less compatible with a basic Slackware install. I used Dropline for a while, but came to the decision that I wanted my desktop to be officially supported on my distro, not an afterthought. And, in the end, the "one-man-distro" concept that Slackware is just wasn't enough any more.

    This really made me sad. Slackware is the garage-built Apple II of the Linux world (I figure SLS was the Apple I). Unfortunately, Linux has moved on from what one person can really package together. Slackware losing GNOME was just a symptom of this larger issue. I know for a fact that many people have offered to help Mr. Volkerding with various aspects of Slackware. I know at least one of the major GNOME packagers for Slackware has offered to do all the GNOME work for Slackware. I myself have made the offer too. Mr. Volkerding just doesn't seem interested in a community for Slackware. As I said, a one-man garage OS just isn't enough, unfortunately.

    I ended up standardizing on Debian for all my machines. I've ugraded two production machines across three versions of Debian now - it just works, always. Debian is conservative, which is perfect for production machines. And it has real package management.

    Every time I see a new Slackware version it makes me sad. Like seeing an old man wheezing on for another birthday. I'd rather see it go now, than continue to bleed marketshare into complete irrelevancy.

  5. Re:Damn, now I'm two versions behind! by DamnStupidElf · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Is VMWare a work requirement? If not, is kvm an option? I'm using kvm on slackware64 13.0 at work with no problems. An Ethertap bridge or qemu's userspace NAT works fine with Windows in an AD environment (although there are some limitations with userspace NAT). The Windows VirtIO drivers for disk and network were pretty easy to get working.

  6. Re:Wait... by Rakshasa+Taisab · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Yeah, and we're so old-fart'ish that at the time when we installed it on our system Slackware was the hottest new thing around.

    Over the years every component in our systems might have been replaces 2-3 times each, yet the soul of the machine is still slack.

    --
    - These characters were randomly selected.