Patrick Volkerding announced that the development branch of Slackware Linux (also known as "Current") has reached "beta" status:
"I will call it a beta, although there is still no solution to the issue orders of 32-bit MariaDB. There will be soon. No issues were noted with the official GCC 10.3 release. Report any new (or old) issues on the LQ Slackware forum. Enjoy!”
The latest changelog entries show several updates, including one upgrades to Linux kernel 5.10.29 (by default. The newest kernel 5.11.13 is available in the "testing" repository) and GCC 10.3.0.
The new version also brings some fixes security for dnsmasq and irssi. All KDE packages have been upgraded. So KDE Plasma is now at version 5.21.4 and KDE Applications at version 5.81.0.
Ο Thunderbird has also been upgraded due to recent security issues.
As always, the Slackware distribution does not provide official ISO testing, but users interested in installing and testing it can download Eric Hameleers' unofficial installation DVD or the installation mini-CD (made from Slackware's "Current" tree updated daily):
- slackware64-current-install-dvd.iso (3,166MB, MD5),
- slackware64-current-mini-install.iso (121MB).
Mention that the distribution is the oldest in circulation.
