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Slackware 13.1 release notes. Wed May 19 04:40:19 UTC 2010
Hi folks,
Historically, the RELEASE_NOTES had been mostly technical
information, but once again Robby Workman has covered the important
technical details in CHANGES_AND_HINTS.TXT. Thanks! If you are
upgrading an existing installation, don't miss the section on the LIBATA
SWITCHOVER.
I'll mention a few technical items here. Slackware's userspace does
require a recent 2.6.x kernel (I believe 2.6.27.x is a minimum for
udev), and as usual unless your needs are specific you're probably
better off running the included kernels that we've tested things
against. The best kernel to run (even on a one CPU/core machine) is the
generic SMP one, but that needs an initrd, so be sure to read the
instructions in /boot after installing with a huge* kernel if you plan
to switch. We have chosen to use the 2.6.33.4 kernel after testing the
2.6.33.x kernel branch extensively. I would not suggest trying to run
without udev. Consider it the userspace portion of the kernel. It *is*
possible, but if you must do that you'll have to tweak a couple things
here and there. The specifics are left as an exercise for the advanced
user. Wait, an advanced user would just use udev. Really, it works and
makes things a lot easier.
Slackware 13.1 contains version 4.4.3 of the KDE Software
Compilation. In the nearly 8 months since the release of Slackware
13.0, the KDE team made some huge improvements, including better
handling of netbook screen resolutions, a new authentication framework
based on standards from freedesktop.org, and a new tabbing feature that
allows applications to be grouped in a tabbed interface. You'll notice
a snappier feel, helped also by the improved performance of Qt version
4.6.2.
Several Xfce components have been updated as well. Xfce continues
to be a great lightweight desktop that doesn't get in your way. If you
haven't looked at this great desktop environment lately, you might want
to give it another try. Thanks to Robby for tracking the Xfce
development closely and making sure everything was just exactly right in
the Slackware Xfce packages.
If you prefer GNOME, there are teams online producing GNOME for
Slackware. Here are a few places to look:
http://gnomeslackbuild.org
http://www.droplinegnome.net/
http://www.gware.org/
If any of these replaces some system components, using them voids
your warranty. ;-) But it should work, *if* you absolutely must have
GNOME. I'd suggest Xfce instead if you want a GTK+ based desktop. If
you do want to use GNOME, remember that there may be some updates needed
after 13.1 is released, so it might be best not to rush into it.
Thanks to these teams for making the GNOME desktop a viable option for
Slackware users.
Need more build scripts? Something that you wanted wasn't included
in Slackware? Well, then check out slackbuilds.org. Several of the team
members work on the scripts there.
Thanks to the rest of the team (and other contributors) for the
great help -- Eric Hameleers for major work on the KDE SC packages, init
scripts, installer, documentation, and all the extra packages like
multilib compilers (read more here: http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/),
Robby Workman for following X.Org, udev, wicd, xfce, and tons of other
projects, building and testing all that stuff, writing documentation,
his work with the team at slackbuilds.org, and lots of package upgrades
(like the switch to the bluez4 bluetooth stack), Piter Punk for udev and
slackpkg work, updating the shadow password system, writing the initial
patch for polkit to use a shadow authentication backend so we could
consider using KDE 4.4.3, and making tap-to-click work with Synaptics
touchpads out-of-the-box, Stuart Winter for more updates to
linuxdoc-tools, and for all kinds of fixes throughout the installer and
system (he finds my bugs all the time while porting packages to ARM for
the ARMedslack port: http://www.armedslack.org/), Alan Hicks for
testing the installer on Apple hardware, Vincent Batts for keeping Ruby
working well and other miscellaneous fixes, Andrew Psaltis for work on
the polkit/shadow patches, Heinz Wiesinger for Qt (and other) fixes,
Amritpal Bath for various bugfixes and helping with release torrents,
mrgoblin for testing RAID, bluetooth, and well, everything (and fixing a
lot of it, too), other very honorable mentions go to Erik Jan Tromp,
Mark Post, Karl Magnus Kolstoe, Fizban, Fred Emmott, and NetrixTardis,
and anyone else I'm forgetting (including the other team members who
contributed little fixes and suggestions here and there along with
general moral support), and all the folks who emailed in bug reports
(and especially fixes). Thanks for the technical assistance (*you* make
this possible), and for keeping the project a good time. And, of
course, thanks *much* to the upstream developers for such nice building
materials. As always, thanks to my wife Andrea and daughter Briah (who
is becoming a surprisingly good beta tester already!)
Have fun!
Pat Volkerding <volkerdi@slackware.com>
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