Linuxman's Ratings Guide
Required User Level: Beginner/Intermediate
Installation: Very basic looking, but gets the job done. Will require some input.
Support: Excellent - forums, mailing lists & detailed online documentation
No. of CD's or DVD's: 1
Media: DVD-R


Advanced Linux operating system, designed with the twin goals of ease of use and stability as top priorities.

Slackware Linux provides new and experienced users alike with a fully-featured system, equipped to serve in any capacity from desktop workstation to machine-room server. Web, ftp, and email servers are ready to go out of the box, as are a wide selection of popular desktop environments. A full range of development tools, editors, and current libraries is included for users who wish to develop or compile additional software.

From the beginning, Slackware has offered a stable and secure Linux distribution for UNIX veterans as well as an easy-to-use system for beginners. Slackware includes everything you'll need to run a powerful server or workstation. Each Slackware package follows the setup and installation instructions from its author(s) as closely as possible, offering you the most stable and easily expandable setup.

Slackware 13.x has many improvements over the last release and is a must-have upgrade for any Slackware user.

Slackware 13.37 brings many updates and enhancements, among which you'll find two of the most advanced desktop environments available today: Xfce 4.6.2, a fast and lightweight but visually appealing and easy to use desktop environment, and KDE 4.5.5, a recent stable release of the 4.5.x series of the award-winning KDE desktop environment.

Slackware uses HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) and udev, which allow the system administrator to grant use of various hardware devices according to users' group membership so that they will be able to use items such as USB flash sticks, USB cameras that appear like USB storage, portable hard drives, CD and DVD media, MP3 players, and more, all without requiring sudo, the mount or umount command. Just plug and play.

Slackware uses the 2.6.37.6 kernel bringing you advanced performance features such as journaling filesystems, SCSI and ATA RAID volume support, SATA support, Software RAID, LVM (the Logical Volume Manager), and encrypted filesystems. Kernel support for X DRI (the Direct Rendering Interface) brings high-speed hardware accelerated 3D graphics to Linux.

• Linux Kernel 2.6.37.6
• KDE 4.5.5
• Xfce 4.6.2
• Complete KOffice productivity suite
• SeaMonkey 2.1b3
• Firefox 4.0
• Thunderbird 3.1.9

Information Courtesy of Slackwares release announcement and reprinted in compliance with the Open Publication License. All trademarks/copyrights are the property of their respective owners