Slackware: Kernel 4.4.10 and Liveslak Images

Ola! While we're still waiting Eric Hameleers has quietly (sort of) updated many of his packages, among them Chromium 51, and also released v1.0.0 of his liveslak project, still based on Slackware Current as of now, on his Alien Pastures blog. Eric writes he considers

Kernel 3.9.10 Now in Slackware-Current

The title says it all, already yesterday Linux 3.9.10 entered the Slackware-Current branch which is at some point to become Slackware 14.1. Can't wait, this will be another great and extremely up-to-date release if it goes on like this. Of course you can run the latest also with stable, so far all kernel updates from Current have been working well in my 14.0 system.

KDE 4.10.5 and Linux 3.9.9 Now in Slackware-Current

No sooner had I updated my Current partition to the recent 3.9.7 kernel and already last night KDE 4.10.5 and Linux 3.9.9 landed. Here's a link to the changelog for your convenience. What a massive piece of work. That not being enough, and with a freshly remastered iso from Eric Hameleers' script, today there are several more updates for kde-workspace (Rebuilt) and upgrades for ModemManager and NetworkManager among others.

Running Slackware-Current

Slackware 14 was released 17 months after the previous release and in theory there should have been a massive bump. While a lot happened under the hood, for example the introduction of kmod and gtk+ 3, it just felt like more of the same on the desktop and not really worth the upgrade from 13.37, in particular if you'd already updated your stock kernel before. With a Linux kernel 3.2.29 and KDE 4.8.5 the new release seemed quite modest and middle of the road at the time.

CRUX 2.8 Review - The Inspiration Behind Arch Linux

This one is well overdue, but the time has finally come. In my defence, I installed CRUX 2.7.1 as far back as summer, but a hard drive failure wiped it all, and since then 2.8 was released. Just as well, so we'll be testing the latest version 2.8. CRUX is a DIY distribution that is perhaps less known than others, but it is the inspiration behind the mighty Arch Linux as the distribution Judd Vinet was originally using. I would point to this dated interview if you want to know more about the origins of Arch.

Compiling the Kernel in Slackware

One of the reasons why I chose Slackware is that the kernel and other included software is presented vanilla and unpatches, as intended by the developers. That makes recompiling a lot easier in my experience than in some of the other major distributions, no finger pointing, where one first has to track down and apply distribution specific patches.