Slackware 13.0 released, features 64-bit support

[Wally Balljacker]

After one of the most intensive periods of development in Slackware's history, the long awaited stable release of Slackware 13.0 is ready. This release brings with it many major changes since Slackware 12.2, including a completely reworked collection of X packages (a configuration file for X is no longer needed in most cases), major upgrades to the desktop environments (KDE version 4.2.4 and Xfce version 4.6.1), a new .txz package format with much better compression, and other upgrades all around -- to the development system, network services, libraries, and major applications like Firefox and Thunderbird. We think you'll agree that this version of Slackware was worth the wait. Also, this is the first release of Slackware with native support for the 64-bit x86_64 architecture! Major kudos to Eric Hameleers for all of his work, especially on the 64-bit port.

http://slackware.com/announce/13.0.php

[Claudio]

So happy to see this release finally arrive. My DVD ISO should have already finished downloading by now...

[Patrick]

Installed the 64 bit version on my laptop on Saturday night. So far I'm actually liking it. Nice and responsive. I'll keep it on their till at least when Karmic goes into beta

[har91]

Another one to test...
I always like to trying distros around but having just a machine with a small disk (60gb total and still multibooting with windows *sigh*), space is always a concern.
I've thought of getting some old machines but you can't get the fancier distros to run smooth on those.

[Gomer_X]

I've got Slackware 12.2 on my system and it's pretty cool except the version of FVWM is way to old.

I keep it on my system because I need a 32 bit distro to do LFS builds. I can't get i386 Debian to install on my 64 bit system, but Slackware works great.

If it had the package support Debian does, I might run it full time. I'll definitely try out a 64 bit Slack 13 install to see how it goes.

[Gomer_X]

Finally got around to doing a Slackware 13 install (on a 64 bit system). Went OK, but I couldn't get it to boot. The only thing unusual I did was not install Lilo because I already use GRUB. I played around with it and couldn't get it to work, but I could get my install to boot from the install CD.

I figured ext4 was the problem, so I wiped and reinstalled to an ext3 partition and everything works fine. I'm not sure if failure to bboot from an ext4 partition is an ext4 limitation or if GRUB just can't do it.

Anyway, Slackware 13 looks great, although I just really, really hate KDE 4.x. It's just too slow and bloated for me. If it weren't for Debian I might think of making a go of Slackware. I'd have to compile some stuff to get what I want, but I could live with it.