Slackware 15.0 released!
Published on 2022-02-08 at 22:22:22 by Georgi Sotirov
After the longest wait ever (of just over
5 years and 7 months) the next major release of Slackware -
Slackware 15.0 - was born on 2022-02-02 at
22:22:22 UTC (you get the
catch ;-)). There were one alpha,
one beta and three RCs (see RC1, RC2
and RC3) in
this long development cycle
that came out in about a year
time. It is a release I waited since
2020, because even then Slackware 14.2 was already old and
though time for two
years earlier for the changes already accumulated. However,
I do understand the Slackware team in their best efforts to make
it modern without changing the character of the operating
system
and against all the odds (see my requests for donation and for becoming a patron).
Well, Slackware 15.0 is here, so let's see what it offers:
- Base system:
- Linux Kernel 5.5.19
LTS (with configs
for building 5.16 kernels included in
/testingdirectory); - GNU C Library 2.33;
- PAM-based user authentication;
elogind(obsoleting ConsoleKit2);- pkgtools was developed as well (updated with file locking
against collisions from parallel installs or upgrades. The amount
of data written to storage was minimized to avoid extra writes on SSD devices. There is now also support
for uninstall scripts through
/install/douninst.sh);
- Linux Kernel 5.5.19
LTS (with configs
for building 5.16 kernels included in
- Networking:
- Networking scripts now use iproute2,
instead of net-tools and
bridge-utils
and friends. Previous functionality is still supported with the same
configuration syntax. New functionality includes:
- support for creation of virtual interfaces (e.g. tun/tap) and adding them to bridges;
- support for binding additional IP addresses to virtual and/or real interfaces;
- support for VLAN (802.1Q);
- support for Link Aggregation (bonding);
- support for IPv6 (SLAAC is disabled by default);
- Networking scripts now use iproute2,
instead of net-tools and
bridge-utils
and friends. Previous functionality is still supported with the same
configuration syntax. New functionality includes:
- Servers:
- Postfix 3.6
(replacing Sendmail as MTA,
which is still available in
/extradirectory); - Dovecot 2.3
(replacing old
imapdas IMAP andipop3das POP3 daemons); - ProFTPD 1.3.7c
(with
mod_sftpandmod_faclsupport); - Apache httpd 2.4.52 (with HTTP/2 support);
- Samba 4.15;
- MariaDB 10.5.13;
- Bind 9.16, dhcp 4.4.2, ntp 4.2.8p15 (now running as ntp:ntp) and more;
- Postfix 3.6
(replacing Sendmail as MTA,
which is still available in
- Development:
- GNU's Compiler Collection 11.2 and LLVM 13.0;
- Perl 5.34;
- PHP 7.4.27 by
default (with 8.0 and 8.1 in
/extra); - Python 3.9 (with pip and some basic modules like docutils, setuptools, CFFI, etc. Python 2 is still available, although strongly NOT recommended as it is not supported since more than two years ago);
- Ruby 3.0.3 (with asciidoctor gem);
- Rust 1.58.1 (new language);
- Git 2.35.1 and Mercurial 6.0.1;
- Multimedia:
- PipeWire 0.3.44 (as an alternative to PulseAudio);
- FFmpeg 4.4.1;
- SDL2 2.0.20 (with some core libraries like gfx, image, net, etc.);
- GUI:
There are many (over 250) new packages among them FFmpeg 4.4, new libraries like opus, lame, libbluray, speex, id3lib, libwebp and various Python modules (e.g. idna and six), which I was previously building and publishing here for previous major releases. I will stop building these, but I would post another news specificity on this later. I'm already preparing my build infrastructure, so packages for Slackware 15.0 would start to pop up in the following days. My initial focus would be on basic tools and libraries and then MySQL, because I would like to finally bring 8.0 to Slackware stable.
Slackware 15.0 is a great new release, so download and start using it or go upgrade your installations!
Happy upgrading!
References and further readings:
Updates:
- 2022-02-09: Added Networking changes, fixed several spelling errors.