14 DAY TRIAL // Slackel KDE 4.10.5 Beta 1, a distribution based on Slackware and Salix that uses the Salix tools and packages, has been released and is ready for testing.
All Slackel distributions are based on Slackware and Salix, but the developers are making their own personal blend. Slackel is also called the Hellenic Linux Distribution due to the fact that it's built in Greece.
As the name implies, Slackel KDE 4.10.5 Beta is based on KDE SC 4.10.5, which is one of the older releases in the KDE branch. Users should already be accustomed with the way this version of Slackel looks because the KDE 4.10.x version has been released for quite some time and a lot of distros have adopted it.
“Slackel kde-4.10.5 includes the current tree of Slackware and KDE 4.10.5 accompanied by a very rich collection of KDE centric software. Firefox 24.3.0esr, KMail, Ktorrent, Akregator, Kopete, OpenJRE-7u51, rhino, icedtea-web, Pidgin and Gftp, Wicd, slapt-get and its graphical frontend Gslapt, sourcery.”
“In the multimedia section Dragon media player, Clementine 1.2.1, K3b 2.0.2 included. The Salix codecs installer application can be used, to quickly and easily install patent encumbered codecs to your system,” reads the announcement.
The developers have also implemented a number of very important suites, including office applications such as Calligra Words, Calligra Stage, Calligra Tables. A few other important tools like KOrganizer, KAddressBook, and the Okular document viewer have been added, not to mention Skanlite, which is a lightweight scanning application based on libksane.
The Graphics section features a number of major applications, such as Krita, Karbon, Gwenview, KColorChooser, and Ksnapshot. Many more can be found in the official repositories.
“The ncurses installer includes the option to install Lilo or Grub boot loader. After installation users can use grubconfig utility to reinstall grub or change the boot loader from LILO to GRUB. Users can also use update-grub to update grub menus any time they upgrade their kernel or install other Linux distribution. The os-prober tool is used to probe for other operating systems and to update GRUB menus,” is also noted in the announcement.
Users don't have to worry about any UEFI incompatibilities, because the 64-bit version of Slackel KDE 4.10.5 Beta 1 fully supports UEFI.
Slackel KDE 4.10.5 Beta 1 was developed for the 32-bit and 64-bit architectures and the images can be easily burned on a CD, or they can be used from a regular USB stick.
Download Slackel KDE 4.10.5 Beta 1 right now from Softpedia. Remember that this is a development version and it should NOT be installed on production machines. It is intended for testing purposes only.