Slackware 13.37 release notes.  Mon Apr 25 02:43:57 UTC 2011

Hi folks,

    Historically, the RELEASE_NOTES had been mostly technical 
information, but once again Robby Workman has covered the important 
technical details in CHANGES_AND_HINTS.TXT.  Thanks!

    I'll mention a few technical items here.  Slackware's userspace does 
require a recent 2.6.x kernel (I believe 2.6.27.x is a minimum for 
udev), and as usual unless your needs are specific you're probably 
better off running the included kernels that we've tested things 
against. The best kernel to run (even on a one CPU/core machine) is the 
generic SMP one, but that needs an initrd, so be sure to read the 
instructions in /boot after installing with a huge* kernel if you plan 
to switch. We have chosen to use the 2.6.37.6 kernel after testing the 
2.6.37.x kernel branch extensively (and because there are still a few
things that work in 2.6.37.x but not in 2.6.38.x).  But, for those who
would like to run the latest kernel, there are 2.6.38.4 kernels included
in /testing.  Also in the /testing/source/ directory you'll find config
files for two other kernel versions, 2.6.35.12 (which is a longterm
supported branch), and 2.6.39-rc4, a release candidate for
the next major kernel series.

    Slackware 13.37 contains updated versions of both KDE and Xfce, but
if you prefer GNOME then you'll be pleased with the work that the
GNOME SlackBuild (GSB) team is doing producing a full-featured GNOME
desktop for Slackware:

    http://gnomeslackbuild.org

    Need more build scripts?  Something that you wanted wasn't included 
in Slackware?  Well, then check out slackbuilds.org. Several of the team 
members work on the scripts there.

    Thanks to the rest of the team (and other contributors) for the 
great help -- Eric Hameleers for major work on the KDE SC packages, init 
scripts, installer, documentation, and all the extra packages like 
multilib compilers (read more here: http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/), 
Robby Workman for following X.Org, udev, wicd, xfce, and tons of other 
projects, building and testing all that stuff, writing documentation, 
his work with the team at slackbuilds.org, and lots of package upgrades 
(like the switch to the bluez4 bluetooth stack), Piter Punk for udev and
slackpkg work, Stuart Winter for more updates to linuxdoc-tools, slacktrack,
and for all kinds of fixes throughout the installer and system (he finds my
bugs all the time while porting packages to ARM for the ARMedslack port:
http://www.armedslack.org/), Alan Hicks for testing the installer on Apple
hardware, Vincent Batts for keeping Ruby working well (difficult!) and other
miscellaneous fixes, Heinz Wiesinger for PHP (and other) fixes,
Amritpal Bath for various bugfixes and helping with release torrents, 
mrgoblin for testing RAID, bluetooth, and well, everything (and fixing a 
lot of it, too), other very honorable mentions go to Erik Jan Tromp, 
Mark Post, Karl Magnus Kolstoe, Fred Emmott, and NetrixTardis, 
and anyone else I'm forgetting (including the other team members who 
contributed little fixes and suggestions here and there along with 
general moral support), and all the folks who emailed in bug reports 
(and especially fixes).  Thanks for the technical assistance (*you* make 
this possible), and for keeping the project a good time.  And, of 
course, thanks *much* to the upstream developers for such nice building 
materials.  As always, thanks to my wife Andrea and daughter Briah.

Have fun!

Pat Volkerding <volkerdi@slackware.com>

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