LAMPDocs

Slackware 13.1 brings many updates and enhancements, among whichyou’ll find two of the most advanced desktop environments availabletoday: Xfce 4.6.1, a fast and lightweight but visually appealing andeasy to use desktop environment, and KDE 4.4.3, a recent stable releaseof the new 4.4.x series of the award-winning KDE desktop environment. They continue to make use of HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) and udev,which allow the system administrator to grant use of various hardwaredevices according to users’ group membership so that they will be ableto use items such as USB flash sticks, USB cameras that appear like USBstorage, portable hard drives, CD and DVD media, MP3 players, and more,all without requiring sudo, the mount or umount command.  Just plug andplay.  Properly set up, Slackware’s desktop should be suitable for anylevel of Linux experience.  New to the desktop framework are ConsoleKitand PolicyKit.  ConsoleKit handles “seats”, things like dealing withdevices when switching from one user to another.  PolicyKit is a systemfor fine-grained access control, allowing a non-root user to run certaintasks with elevated privilege, but more securely than if the entire taskwere simply run as root.

Slackware uses the 2.6.33.4 kernel bringing you advanced performancefeatures such as journaling file systems, SCSI and ATA RAID volumesupport, SATA support, Software RAID, LVM (the Logical Volume Manager),and encrypted filesystems.  Kernel support for X DRI (the DirectRendering Interface) brings high-speed hardware accelerated 3D graphicsto Linux.

There are two kinds of kernels in Slackware.  First there are thehuge kernels, which contain support for just about every driver in theLinux kernel. These are primarily intended to be used for installation,but there’s no real reason that you couldn’t continue to run them afteryou have installed.  The other type of kernel is the generic kernel, inwhich nearly every driver is built as a module.  To use a generic kernelyou’ll need to build an initrd to load your filesystem module andpossibly your drive controller or other drivers needed at boot time,configure LILO to load the initrd at boot, and reinstall LILO.  See thedocs in /boot after installing for more information.  Slackware’s Linuxkernels come in both SMP and non-SMP types now.  The SMP kernel supportsmultiple processors, multi-core CPUs, HyperThreading, and about everyother optimization available.  In their own testing this kernel has provento be fast, stable, and reliable.  They recommend using the SMP kerneleven on single processor machines if it will run on them.

Here are some of the advanced features of Slackware 13.1:

- Runs the 2.6.33.4 version of the Linux kernel from ftp.kernel.org. Also included is a kernel patched with Speakup to support speech synthesizers providing access to Linux for the visually impaired community.  The 2.6.x kernel series has matured into a stable kernel, and provides reliable performance for your desktop or your production server.

- System binaries are linked with the GNU C Library, version 2.11.1. This version of glibc also has excellent compatibility with existing binaries.

- X11 based on the X.Org Foundation’s modular X Window System. There’s been much activity in the X development world, and the improvements in terms of performance and hardware support are too numerous to mention them all here.

- Installs gcc-4.4.4 as the default C, C++, Objective-C,  Fortran-77/95, and Ada 95 compiler.

- Support for fully encrypted network connections with OpenSSL, OpenSSH, OpenVPN, and GnuPG.

- Apache (httpd) 2.2.15 web server with Dynamic Shared Object support, SSL, and PHP 5.2.13.

- PCMCIA, CardBus, USB, IEE1394 (FireWire) and ACPI support.  This makes Slackware a great operating system for your laptop.

- The udev dynamic device management system for Linux 2.6.x. This locates and configures most hardware automatically as it is added (or removed) from the system, and creates the access nodes in /dev.  It also loads the kernel modules required by sound cards and other hardware at boot time.

- New development tools, including Perl 5.10.1, Python 2.6.4, Ruby 1.9.1-p378, Subversion 1.6.11, git-1.7.1, mercurial-1.5.2, graphical tools like Qt designer and KDevelop, and much more.

- Updated versions of the Slackware package management tools make it easy to add, remove, upgrade, and make your own Slackware packages. Package tracking makes it easy to upgrade from Slackware 13.0 to  Slackware 13.1 (see CHANGES_AND_HINTS.TXT).  The slackpkg tool can also help update from an older version of Slackware to a newer one, and keep your Slackware system up to date.  In addition, the slacktrack utility (in extra/) will help you build and maintain your own packages.

- Web browsers galore!  Includes KDE’s Konqueror 4.4.3,  SeaMonkey 2.0.4 (this is the replacement for the Mozilla Suite), and the immensely popular Firefox 3.6.3, as well as the Thunderbird 3.0.4 email and news client with advanced junk mail filtering.

- The KDE Software Compilation 4.4.3, a complete desktop environment. This includes the KOffice productivity suite, networking tools, GUI development with KDevelop, multimedia tools (including the amazing Amarok music player and K3B disc burning software), the Konqueror web browser and file manager, dozens of games and utilities, international language support, and more.

- A collection of GTK+ based applications including pidgin-2.7.0,  gimp-2.6.8, gkrellm-2.3.4, gxine-0.5.903, xchat-2.8.6, xsane-0.996,  and pan-0.133.

- A repository of extra software packages compiled and ready to run. This includes the Java(TM) 2 Software Development Kit Standard Edition, an MPlayer browser plugin, and more (see the /extra directory)

Slackware 13.1 Official website

Download link to the distribution ISO

Torrent link for the distribution