Slackware

Slackware 13.1 Released

Finally, after almost a year of waiting, Slackware 13.1 has been released. I’ve been always a fan of this Linux distro because of its simplicity, stability and security.

My laptop is regularly updated to the slackware current branch and I’m happy that a stable release has arrived last May 24, 2010. Me, as a daily user, there are many noticeable improvements which I did not experience years ago.

New, Updated and Improved

Slackware has been rock solid ever since – especially on the server setup. Me as a developer, I’m using Slackware Linux as a server and a desktop as well. Here are the summary of the most noticeable improvements from 13.0 to 13.1:

  1. Kernel 2.6.33.4
  2. KDE upgraded from the previous 4.2.x to KDE 4.4.3
  3. KDE too has a lot of improvements (not Slackware related)
  4. BlueZ – Bluetooth applications finally
  5. USB modeswitch for USB devices such as 3g modem which can act as storage for drivers first (on Windows)
  6. LAMP stack updated – my favorite of course
  7. Latest version of Firefox
  8. Can’t name the others since I don’t actually care about them but they are many

However, I have on big problem. The kernel shipped with Slackware 13.1 which is 2.6.33.4 does not work on my laptop – maybe because of incompatibility issues. I still have to figure it out or I may have to compile my own kernel. I’m still using the 2.6.33.2 kernel so far so good.

But still, it was a great experience as always. Get Slackware now and try it.

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