One of the oldest Linux distributions, Slackware, has a new update. Slackware was first released in 1993, 28 years ago, and it is still being maintained by Patrick Volkerding. The last version before 15.0 was 14.2 and it was also released back in 2016. It is one of the oldest Linux distributions that is still being maintained.
Linux kernel is upgraded to 5.15 LTS
Slackware Linux 15.0 comes with Linux kernel 5.15 LTS version. In the beta version of 15.0, which was released in April 2021, the kernel version was 5.10 LTS. The new kernel broadens hardware support by a lot and brings additional features such as enhanced NTFS driver support. The final release uses KDE Plasma 5.23.5 desktop environment and KDE Frameworks 5.90.0. Xfce is also ready to use with its 4.16 version.
The new version brings Rust and Python 3 support, replaces ConsoleKit2 with elogind. There are some other changes as well. Patrick Volkerding, developer of Slackware Linux said;
« The challenge this time around was to adopt as much of the good stuff out there as we could without changing the character of the operating system. Keep it familiar, but make it modern. And boy did we have our work cut out for us. We adopted PAM (finally) as projects we needed dropped support for pure shadow passwords. We switched from ConsoleKit2 to elogind, making it much easier to support software that targets that Other Init System and brings us up-to-date with the XDG standards. We added support for PipeWire as an alternate to PulseAudio, and for Wayland sessions in addition to X11. Dropped Qt4 and moved entirely to Qt5. Brought in Rust and Python 3. Added many, many new libraries to the system to help support all the various additions. We’ve upgraded to two of the finest desktop environments available today: Xfce 4.16, a fast and lightweight but visually appealing and easy to use desktop environment, and the KDE Plasma 5 graphical workspaces environment, version 5.23.5 (the Plasma 25th Anniversary Edition). This also supports running under Wayland or X11. »
Click here to read the full list of the changes in Slackware 15.0