14 DAY TRIAL // Attila Crăciun announced yesterday the release of Bluewhite64 Linux 13.0, a Slackware-based distribution that runs natively on AMD/Intel's 64-bit processors. Many changes and upgrades have been made, and, along with those, come new features and improvements over the older Bluewhite64 12.2.
The operating system now uses an improved packaging format based on the LZMA compression algorithm, thus reducing package sizes and the decompression time. These new packages have a ".txz" extension, while the older ones were using ".tgz." X.org and its drivers have been updated to version 1.6.3, enabling HAL to do the video settings automatically and removing the need for an xorg.conf file.
A generic 2.6.30.5 Linux kernel has been added to the distribution, but many of its components have been configured for compilation as modules. If you want to use it and the drivers that are needed for your hardware reside in modules, you will have to create an initrd file yourself. Also, if you want to use 32-bit programs, you will need to install the IA32 support libraries that are located in the /extra/ia32-emulation directory on the install media.
Bluewhite64 13.0 includes support for HAL (the Hardware Abstraction Layer), allowing users that are in the cdrom and plugdev groups to manage items such as USB drives, cameras that use the mass-storage protocol or media players in a plug-and-play fashion, without needing to employ elevated privileges or terminal commands.
On the desktop side, there have also been package updates, so you will be able to use the new KDE 4.3.1 desktop environment or the lightweight Xfce 4.6.1. Mozilla Firefox has been updated to 3.5.2, along with Thunderbird 2.0.0.23 and SeaMonkey 1.1.18. Although OpenOffice.org is not included in the package list, you can use KOffice 2.0.2 instead.
Download Bluewhite64 13.0 right now from Softpedia.