Slackware is a Linux distribution created by Patrick Volkerding in 1993. For many early Linux users, Slackware was their introduction. After more than a quarter century and 30-plus versions later, Slackware is the oldest actively maintained Linux distribution, but now it is not nearly as popular as it was a decade or more ago.
The features of the distribution are the lack of complications and a simple system of initialization in the style of classical BSD systems.
We haven’t had any Slackware news since the release of Slackware Linux 14.2 in July 2016. Till now.
I’m going to go ahead and call this a beta even though there’s still no fix for the illegal instruction issue with 32-bit MariaDB. But there should be soon. No build regressions noted with the official GCC 10.3 release. Please report any new (or old) issues on the LQ Slackware forum. Enjoy!
Said Patrick Volkerding
The main differences of Slackware 15 are booked to updating the versions of programs, including the transition to the Linux 5.10 kernel, a set of GCC compilers 10.3 and the system library glibc 2.33.
In addition to the above updates, with Slackware 15.0 you’ll find KDE Plasma 5.21.4, KDE Applications 5.81.0 and Xfce 4.16.
Unfortunately, Slackware does not provide any official testing images. However, users interested in installing and testing the distribution are welcome to download Eric Hameleers’ unofficial installation DVD or installation mini CD. You can find them on this link.
You’ll find the full Slackware 15.0 Beta changelog here.
