14 DAY TRIAL // Today, Slackware maintainer and lead developer Patrick Volkerding has announced the release and immediate availability for testing of the first RC (Release Candidate) build of the upcoming Slackware 14.2 operating system.
Slackware 14.2 RC1 comes one and a half months after the release of the second Beta build on February 4, 2016, during which Mr. Volkerding managed to update as many core components and applications as possible. For example, Slackware 14.2 Release Candidate 1 is powered by the recently announced Linux 4.4.6 LTS kernel.
Among other updated components, we can mention Nmap 7.10, Mozilla Firefox 45.0.1, TigerVNC 1.6.0, Git 2.7.3, SeaMonkey 2.40, Gnuplot 5.0.3, sudo 1.8.15, grep 2.24, X.Org Server 1.18.2, MPlayer 1.2 Build 20160125, xine-lib 1.2.6, Vim 7.4.1530, OpenSSH 7.2p2, Calligra 2.9.11, kdelibs 4.14.17, Htop 2.0.1, as well as Bind 9.10.3 P4.
"Let's call this Slackware 14.2 Release Candidate 1. We still have a bit of work to do before this is fully ready to go, but we're done doing every little upgrade that comes along. Well, mostly," said Patrick Volkerding, Slackware maintainer, in the official changelog for Slackware Current.
Slackware 14.2 RC1 ready for public testing now
The weekend is here, and if you're planning on taking the Release Candidate of Slackware 14.2 for a test drive, we have some good news for you, as the 32-bit and 64-bit ISO images, which have been labeled as "Slackware Current," are now available for download from our website. The final release of Slackware 14.2 should arrive sometime in summer 2016, and it looks like it will be shipping with Linux kernel 4.5.
Of course, you can also get them directly from the project's website, where you'll also find all the details you need to know about installing the Slackware 14.2 operating system, which does not come with Live CDs and is not targeted at Linux newcomers. Please keep in mind, though, that this is still a pre-release version and it might contain bugs.