The oldest Linux distribution Slackware 15.0 beta is out, crashing many rumors that the project is dead.
Slackware Linux is the oldest Linux distribution today. It started as a personal project and became a working base for many Linux distributions back in the day such as the initial SUSE Linux.
Slackware is perfect for technically inclined and advanced users who know how to use command lines, understand how to manage packages, resolve dependencies and get around the errors – like Arch Linux.
Slackware supports 32-bit, 64-bit, and ARM architectures and comes with its own package management tool slackpkg. And it doesn’t use systemd, instead, it uses init for init-system. That makes it faster and ideal for advanced users.
I’m going to go ahead and call this a beta even though there’s still no fix
Release announcement
for the illegal instruction issue with 32-bit mariadb. But there should be
soon (thanks ponce!) No build regressions noted with the official gcc-10.3
release. Please report any new (or old) issues on the LQ Slackware forum.
Enjoy! 🙂
That said, lets take a look what we have for Slackware 15.0 beta.
Table of Contents
Slackware 15.0 Beta – What’s New
Slackware 15.0 beta arrives after almost 5 years since the last stable Slackware 14.2. Hence you can expect many updated packages. Although Slackware follows a “stable-package” based release cadence which different than “time-based” or rolling-based releases.
If you compare and check the differences between Slackware 14.2 and Slackware 15.0 beta – there are massive updates of packages to their stable versions.
Desktops
With Slackware, you can get GNOME, KDE, and Xfce as desktop options. The Slackware 15.0 beta brings the latest KDE Plasma 5.21, Xfce 4.16. However, the GNOME versions seem GNOME 3.36 with some native packages are in GNOME 3.38. The GNOME 40 would arrive later as you can expect more stability in Slackware.
Kernel
Linux Kernel 5.10.x stable (LTS) is available with Kernel 5.11 option as testing package. So if you want the latest Kernel, you can get it via testing repo.
Applications
The entire package update list is huge which you can read here. However, here is a quick summary of the important applications in this release.
- Python 3.9
- Mozilla Firefox 87
- Thunderbird 78.9.1
- KDE Framework 5.81
- KDE Plasma 5.21
- Xfce 4.16
- GNOME 3.36/3.38
Download
If you want to try the latest Slackware and updated applications, download the .iso file from the below link. You can mount it to a USB stick and do a fresh install. Also, you have the option to use any virtual machine to try the latest Slackware.
Make sure to report any issues and bugs here.
Closing Notes
Finally a little step forward to another stable release of Slackware. Many prefer Slackware for its stability, unique way of handling the release cadence, different package manager, and of source a systemd-free system. That said, make sure you download, test, and report issues so that a stable release arrives soon.
