SlackPack News

Slackware 14.0 Released!

gdsotirov@dir.bg (Georgi Sotirov) — Sun, 30 Sep 2012 22:32:06 GMT

After five release candidates the long wait is over and Slackware 14.0 is was finally released last Friday (28/09). Here is a list of the important novelties:

System:

Kernel 3.2.29 (from the long term support series)
GNU LibC 2.15

Services:

ISC BIND 9.9.1
vsftpd 3.0.2
Apache 2.4.3
MySQL 5.5.27

Development:

GCC 4.7.1
Perl 5.16.1
Python 2.7.3
Subversion 1.7.6
git 1.7.12.1
mercurial 2.2.2
KDevelop 4.3.1

X desktop and environments:

X11R7.3 (X.Org server 1.12.3)
KDE 4.8.5 (with Qt 4.8.2)
Xfce 4.10

Browsers:

Firefox 15.0.1
Konqueror 4.8.5
Seamonkey 2.12.1

Slackware now includes LLVM/clang compiler (that's becoming a popular alternative to GCC) and NetworkManager (for easy setup and management of wired and wireless networking).

The release also comes with an announcement of a new Wiki help site Slackware Docs for those that need help or can share their knowledge.

Slackware ARM project has released 14.0 together with the 32-bit and 64-bit PC versions.

You could read the official announcement and the release notes, but if upgrading do not forget to check the file CHANGES_AND_HINTS, which contains information about packages added, removed, renamed, and/or split during the development cycle from the previous stable release. The file also contains information about changes in the system important for packages.

Keep it easy! And "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" ;-)

Reorganization of the repositories (part 2)

gdsotirov@dir.bg (Georgi Sotirov) — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 18:51:05 GMT

The second part of the reorganization of the repositories has finished successfully today. All the packages for Intel x86_64 architecture were moved into their dedicated folders/repositories. Then all the repositories were updated to reflect the modifications.

It's understood that this could make some URLs invalid, but the step is necessary for the greater good. Please, report any broken links, so they could be fixed and sorry for any inconvenience.

Stay tunned for more 64-bit packages!

Reorganization of the repositories (part 1)

gdsotirov@dir.bg (Georgi Sotirov) — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 19:15:01 GMT

For years the SlackPack repositories had a simple layout – one directory for every major Slackware release with all the packages into it. This is going to change, as the repositories grow large, but moreover the packages for different architectures should not be in same folder.

In an ongoing effort the repositories should become more similar to the standard Slackware layout. The steps to this are as follows:

Rename the folders to include distribution's name (e.g. “13.37” becomes “slackware-13.37”);
The packages for Intel x86-64 architecture are going to be placed in dedicated distribution folders (e.g. “slackware64-13.37”);
The packages are going to be divided in subfolders under the top distribution's folder (e.g. Firefox packages are not going to be under “13.37”, but “slackware-13.37/xap”);

The first of these steps was sucesfully performed yesterday and the only viable mirror Marla was updated. For now, the old address are still available, but in the web interface only the new ones are used. I hope this has not caused any problems.

Stay tunned!

Going 64-bit

gdsotirov@dir.bg (Georgi Sotirov) — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 07:01:00 GMT

Ever since Slackware announced 64-bit support in May 2009 and made it official with Slackware 13.0 in August 2009, I was not able to compile 64-bit packages in my SlackPack virtual machines, because of dummy processor choice.

Now this is about to change and I already have 64-bit virtual machines for all of the 13.* series. The machines are still being customized, but the first packages are about to appear soon. I'll try to produce 64-bit packages at the same time as 32-bit.

Do not miss them!

Slackware 13.37 Released!

gdsotirov@dir.bg (Georgi Sotirov) — Sun, 01 May 2011 19:27:39 GMT

The new release with with "strange" (see post1, post2, changelogs) numbering is here!

It was released on April 25-th and promises even better performance and stability. The new relase offers either kernel 2.6.37.6 or 2.6.38.4. Among all the upgrades the highlights are the long-waited Firefox 4 web browser, X Windows upgrade (including nouveau driver for nVidia graphic cards).

The installer has been improved and offers installing to btrfs, one-package-per-line display mode option and and easy to set up PXE install server.

More details: The official announcement, Release notes

Complete list of changes could be found in package's list.

Of course please consider supporting the project through Slackware Store.

Cheers for the new release!

Office suites

gdsotirov@dir.bg (Georgi Sotirov) — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 17:58:19 GMT

You all know the convrovercy around the acquisition of Sun by Oracle and the branch of OpenOffice.org called LibreOffice. I'm not going to comment about this, because I'm neutral. What I need to tell you however, is that you already have the latest releases of both office (productivity) suites availiable on the site. SlackPack will continue building packages for both (Bulgarian translation team is also supporting both) for the time being.

Use and enjoy whatever you want!

!IMPORTANT! Updated license information

gdsotirov@dir.bg (Georgi Sotirov) — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 11:30:15 GMT

Reviwing the whole list of packages and their license designations, several inconsistencies were found with the designation of the package licenses on the site. This resulted in the follwoing actions, in order to appropriately designate license information:

The license LGPL2 was splitted into two:
- GNU Library General Public License, Version 2; and
- GNU Lesser General Public LIcense, Version 2.1.
Three new licenses were introduced:
- BSD Like (See COPYING or LICENSE for details) - for all licenses which look like BSD, but include some additional clauses or modified statements;
- Two-Clause BSD - for licenses which include only the first two statements from BSD license;
- FLTK License - LGPL Version 2 with some exceptions;
- Public Domain - not actually a license; rather it means no copyright and and no license is needed;

The license designations of the following packages were changed:

Name	Affected versions, revisions	Old designation	New designation
Dirac	All	MPL	LGPL 2.1
FLTK	All	LGPL 2	FLTK
LibModPlug	All	n/a	Public Domain
LibOIL	All	BSD	Two-Clause BSD
OpenOffice.org BG	>= 3	LGPL 2	LGPL 3
Speex	All	GPL 2	BSD Like

It's strongly advised to always check the license statements of all the packages, which you install and use. However, in future more strict control will be enforced on the correctness of the license designations on the site, in order to avoid misleading information.

We're sorry for any inconvenience.

Whole range of MySQL software

gdsotirov@dir.bg (Georgi Sotirov) — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 17:15:00 GMT

With the realse of MySQL ODBC and C++ connectors today the site again offers a whole range of MySQL software for database management, development and aministriation under Slackware Linux. As usual you could find the database server along with the C Connector, but now there are also MySQL Workbench, Connector/ODBC and Connector/C++.

The good news is that MySQL Administator and MySQL QueryBrowser could still be used.

Entertain yourself!

Hot August with lots of packages

gdsotirov@dir.bg (Georgi Sotirov) — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 20:39:14 GMT

Wow! It has hot in August, but many new packages popped up on the site. There are many upgrades and rebuilds for Slackware 13.1, as well as some for Slackware 13.0.

Enjoy and stay tunned as more is comming!

Slackware 13.1 Released!

gdsotirov@dir.bg (Georgi Sotirov) — Tue, 25 May 2010 06:25:41 GMT

Over the night (in Europe), Patrick has released Slackware 13.1 to the world. It's availiable in both 32 and 64-bit versions, but most of the mirrors are still catching up.

The highlights in these release are kernel 2.6.33.4, KDE 4.4.3, Xfce 4.6.1, updated toolchain, updated libraries and many more. See the official announcement for more details.

You could visit the Slackware Store and buy disks, T-shirts and other to support the project.

Packages for the new release will hopefully pop up on the site soon and until then have fun, happy upgrading and happy slackin'!