Slackware 12.0 release notes.

Today is Boomtime, the 36th day of Confusion in the YOLD 3173
Sun Jul  1 14:10:58 CDT 2007, The Moon is Waning Gibbous (98% of Full).

Hi folks,

    Since I've always written RELEASE_NOTES (at least in recent
releases) I feel like *something* should go here, but the fact is that
Robby about has everything covered in CHANGES_AND_HINTS.TXT.  Thanks!

    About the only things to mention here are that Slackware now
requires a recent 2.6.x kernel (I believe 2.6.18 is a minimum), but
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.
Since the initrd has been around since Slackware 11.0, hopefully most
Slackware users can take on this task easily and will not be "shocked
and appalled".

    I would not suggest trying to run without udev.  Consider it the
userspace portion of the kernel.  It *is* possible, but if you must
do that you'll have to tweak a couple things here and there.  The
specifics are left as an exercise for the advanced user.  Wait, an
advanced user would just use udev.  Really, it works and makes things
a lot easier.  The only real pitfalls are the network/optical rules
that are auto-generated at boot.  CHANGES_AND_HINTS.TXT mentions
these.

    NPTL glibc is the default now, so no special compile flags are
needed to compile with Native POSIX threads.  LinuxThreads are now
obsolete.  If you have old software that needs them, you can grab
old libraries from Slackware 11.0 and set them up in /lib/obsolete
and use LD_ variables to preload them and set a kernel assume.  A
bit of Google searching will bring up instructions on that easily.

    It looks like the only outside GNOME for Slackware that's
actively maintained is this one:

    http://www.droplinegnome.net/

Since it replaces some system components, using it voids your
warranty.  ;-)  But it should work, *if* you absolutely must have
GNOME.  I'd suggest XFce instead if you want a GTK+ based desktop.
If you do want to use Dropline, they may be updating a few things
after 12.0 releases, so it might be best not to rush into it.

    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 for the great help -- Eric
Hameleers for help with networking improvements, LVM, and encrypted
partition support, Piter Punk for udev work, Stuart Winter for
help with linuxdoc-tools, cleaning up the Qt build script, and
other stuff, Erik Jan Tromp for the etherboot floppy for starting
a PXE install, Amritpal Bath for getting a fixed vim syntax file
for me (and general improvements to my sanity), Robby Workman for
docs (and a *lot* more), mrgoblin for suggestions on what to do
with 5kg of Kiwis, 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.

Oh, and thanks to my wife Andrea for not smacking me with the
LART as release time drew close.  ;-)

Have fun!  :-)

Pat Volkerding <volkerdi@slackware.com>