Slackware 12.2 RC1 !

http://www.slackware.com/changelog/current.php?cpu=i386 http://distrowatch.com/?newsid=05219

While there are still some docs that need updating and probably a few more tweaks and updates here and there, everything is mostly in place for the next stable release, Slackware 12.2. The versions of major components like X and the kernel can be considered frozen. Anything major that we haven't done yet will probably wait for the release after this next one. As Slackware 12.2 is only a 0.1 version bump, we're trying to focus on making it better without causing instability or losing compatibility with Slackware 12.1 wherever possible. Invasive changes like the new X (that will require changes to xorg.conf) and merging KDE4 should probably wait for Slackware 13.0. We will call this batch Slackware 12.2 release candidate one. :-) Hooray!

After dabbling in Ubuntu, Fedora, and some other quick release distros... I find myself wanting something more focused on stability. Slackware and Debian are on my radar again.

I'm glad they chose to hold off on KDE 4 until the next release since KDE 3.5 is still in my book way better. Otherwise doesn't seem like too major of an release ,but I still can't wait to start using Slackware again :)

This will be good, I'll install when it's actually released though as I do a lot of customisation to the installation so installing an RC Would be pointless.

I'm glad they chose to hold off on KDE 4 until the next release since KDE 3.5 is still in my book way better.

Yes I agree, although I like the concept of 4 and I like the way it works, it's still not stable and I think some distros have gone for it way too early, I don't know how they think that giving their users a buggy desktop environment is fine. Of course that will change with new releases and I would imagine that Slackware will not include 4.x as default until it is more stable.

The new xserver is pretty buggy too. Just take a look at the Arch Linux forums starting 11/30. Broken systems galore! I tried it with KDE 4.1.3 or whatever it ships with and it didn't take me 5 minutes to notice game breaking bugs.

Slackware is definitely a breath of fresh air and a good compromise between the ultra conservative enterprise distributions and the bleeding edge rolling releases.