None other than Patrick Volkerding, father of Slackware Linux, announced a new and greatly improved release of his Linux distribution, Slackware 12.2, now powered by version 2.6.27.7 of the Linux kernel, which offers features such as encrypted and journaling filesystems, support for RAID (ATA and S-ATA) volumes, Software RAID, support for S-ATA drives and LVM (Logical Volume Manager).

"This Slackware edition combines Slackware's legendary simplicity (and close tracking of original sources), stability, and security with some of the latest advances in Linux technology. Expect no less than the best Slackware yet." - said Volkerding on the official release announcement.

Even if Slackware 12.2 does not use the highly acclaimed KDE 4 desktop environment, it still offers two of the most easy to use, fast and powerful desktops on the maket: XFCE 4.4.3 and KDE 3.5.10. The included version of the K Desktop Environment comes with KOffice, Amarok, K3b, KDevelop, Konqueror, networking utilities, lots of games, and much more.



Highlights of Slackware 12.2:

For users:

· KDE (K Desktop Environment) 3.5.10
· Xfce 4.4.3
· Pidgin 2.5.2
· Mozilla Firefox 3.0.4
· Mozilla Thunderbird 2.0.0.18
· SeaMonkey 1.1.13
· XChat 2.8.6
· The Gimp 2.4.7
· GXine 0.5.903
· XSane 0.996
· Pan News Reader 0.133
· GKrellM 2.3.2

For developers:

· GCC 4.2.4
· Apache 2.2.10 (with support for SSL and Dynamic Shared Object)
· PHP 5.2.8
· Perl 5.10.0
· Python 2.5.2
· Ruby 1.8.7-p72
· Subversion 1.5.4
· GIT 1.6.0.3
· Mercurial 1.0.2
· KDevelop 3.5

Other features brought by Slackware 12.2 include enhanced support for PCMCIA, USB, FireWire, CardBus and ACPI, encrypted networks powered by GnuPG, OpenVPN, OpenSSH and OpenSSL, an enhanced version of slackpkg, Slackware's package manager, that allows you to easily install, update, remove, and even to create Slackware packages, with slacktrack. Moreover, all the system binaries are not linked with the version 2.7 of the GNU C library, which offers outstanding compatibility with the current binaries.



Slackware is a Linux distribution created, developed and maintained by Patrick Volkerding with ease of use and stability in mind. This distribution is considered one of the most secure and stable at this moment. Slackware will offer you some of the finest and most popular applications in a KDE environment that is all about simplicity and ease of use and, at the same time, power and flexibility. Slackware was created to combine the two worlds, of beginners and advanced users, into a single distribution that could satisfy everyone. Also, it is one of the oldest distributions, being started in April 1993, with the aim of giving birth to a Linux distribution that was closer to its ancestor, UNIX. Slackware can work acceptably even on a 486 machine.

"Have fun! I hope you find Slackware to be useful, and thanks very much for your support of this project over the years." - ended Patrick Volkerding the release announcement for Slackware 12.2.

Download Slackware Linux 12.2 right now from Softpedia.