Today, Pat Volkerding published a massive amount of package updates to the slackware-current tree. Some of the absolute highlights mentioned in the ChangeLog are indication of a big step forward for Slackware, and most importantly: KDE 3.5.10 is gone, replaced by KDE 4.2.1.

Well folks, it's that time to announce a new stable Slackware release again. So, without further ado, announcing Slackware version 12.1!

A few hours ago Slackware's creator, Patrick Volkerding, announced that the second release candidate of the upcoming Slackware 13.0 Linux distribution was available for download.

Just as an update to my Upgrading KDE 4.2.4 to KDE 3.5.10 in Slackware 13 post, Patrick Volkerding has apparently released KDE 3.5.10 for Slackware 13.0 (link here).

Pat Volkerding and the Slackware team released the latest version of Slackware Linux, 12.1, on May 2. Even though it is a "point one" release, the list of new features reads like what other distributions would consider a major new version. Slackware 12.1 features the latest KDE 3.5.9, Xfce 4.4.2, and a number of improvements, especially to udev.

After my positive experience of Debian it was time to move on and this time I chose Slackware 12 to try out. I didn't know anything about Slackware going into it and I certainly didn't know what I was getting myself into, "fools rush in" as they say. I certainly did. Slackware was an effort to say the least, I spent a couple of days with it. So, here's what happened on my Slackware adventure...

Slackware 13.37 brings many updates and enhancements, among which you'll find two of the most advanced desktop environments available today: Xfce 4.6.2, a fast and lightweight but visually appealing and easy to use desktop environment, and KDE 4.5.5, a recent stable release of the 4.5.x series of the award-winning KDE desktop environment.

From the release number, you can probably guess that it is based on Ubuntu Desktop 13.04. But what you cannot guess from the name or release number is that it ships with its own desktop environment called HY-D-V1. It also makes it super easy to test-drive other desktop environments from the same installation, without ever rebooting the computer or logging out of the current desktop.

Slackware has now gone 64-bit with an official x86_64 port being maintained in-sync with the regular x86 -current branch. DVDs will be available for purchase from the Slackware store when Slackware 13.0 is released.