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+Slackware 13.0 release notes.  Tue Aug 25 23:40:18 CDT 2009
+
+Hi folks,
+
+    Historically, the RELEASE_NOTES (at least in recent releases)
+had been mostly technical information, but once again Robby Workman
+has covered the important technical details in CHANGES_AND_HINTS.TXT.
+Thanks!
+
+    Probably the first thing to mention about the release of
+Slackware 13.0 is that it marks our first release with an official
+64-bit port!  Thanks to the hard work of Eric Hameleers, Slackware
+for x86 is available in both 32-bit and 64-bit (x86_64) editions.
+Eric did incredible work on the 64-bit port.  The SlackBuild scripts
+were so much of an improvement over the originals from the 32-bit tree
+that they were imported over on the 32-bit side -- the only difference
+in the build trees is whether $ARCH is set to i486 or x86_64.  These
+scripts are finding use in other ports too, like Stuart Winter's
+ARMedslack port to the ARM architecture (the ARM Versatile platform
+emulated by QEMU, and the Marvell SheevaPlug), and Mark Post's
+Slack/390 Linux Project for IBM S/390 G2 class systems and above.
+The goal of a unified source tree for these projects seems to be coming
+into focus.  For more information about these Slackware ports, see
+http://armedslack.org and http://slack390.org.  Getting back to the
+x86_64 port (nicknamed Slackware64), we also have to thank Fred Emmott
+who helped us solve a number of tricky problems having been there
+before -- without his help things like getting ncurses right so that
+the nVidia installer worked, and laying the groundwork for future
+multilib support would have been much more difficult.  Thanks Fred!
+
+    About the only things to mention here are that Slackware requires
+a recent 2.6.x kernel (I believe 2.6.22.x 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.
+We've used the well-tested and recently patched 2.6.29.6 kernel, but
+the 2.6.30.5 kernel is also available as packages in /testing.  If
+you decide to give that a try, be sure to read the information about
+LILO in there.
+
+    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.
+
+    Another huge change in Slackware 13.0 is the move from KDE3 to
+KDE4.  KDE4 has been out for about a year and a half now, and it has
+come a long way since KDE 4.0.  The KDE 4.2.4 release included in
+Slackware 13.0 is a very fast and polished desktop.  It looks great
+and achieves its goal of making the Linux operating system as nice
+a desktop OS as anything that is available at any price!  With KDE3
+pretty much winding down (probably there will not be further releases)
+and projects dropping KDE3 support in favor of KDE4, the time was
+right to make the move to KDE4 in Slackware.  I'm using it on all of
+my own machines (including an Intel Atom with compositing enabled),
+and I've really fallen in love with it once I got used to it.  The
+tools are integrated better with the desktop, Qt4 seems to be a
+faster and more stable platform, and nearly everything that was
+available for KDE3 has been ported to KDE4 and works great.  Huge
+thanks to the KDE team for producing the great desktop environment
+they promised to deliver!  As with any major rewrite, there are,
+however, still a few quirks, but these are few and the improvements
+have been coming fast.  One of the issues we're aware of is that
+k3b hasn't been working as well as the KDE3 version for some people
+(it works fine here, but we have heard some reports), and there are
+some other KDE applications where people still prefer the old versions.
+To help with this, there are KDE3 compatibility packages that can
+be found in /extra/kde3-compat/.  With these installed, most KDE3
+programs will run.  A KDE3 version of k3b is also included in that
+directory.
+
+    Xfce has been updated as well, and continues to be a great
+lightweight desktop that doesn't get in your way.  You'll notice
+improvements in Xfce immediately upon starting it.  If you haven't
+looked at this great desktop environment lately, you might want to
+give it another try.  Thanks to Robby for tracking the Xfce
+development closely and making sure everything was just exactly
+right in the Slackware Xfce packages.
+
+    If you prefer GNOME, there are teams online producing GNOME
+for Slackware.  Here are a few places to look:
+
+    http://gnomeslackbuild.org
+    http://www.droplinegnome.net/
+    http://www.gware.org/
+
+If any of these replaces some system components, using them 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 GNOME, remember that there may be
+some updates needed after 13.0 releases, so it might be best not
+to rush into it.  Thanks to these teams for making the GNOME
+desktop a viable option for Slackware users.
+
+    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 (and other contributors) for
+the great help -- Eric Hameleers for x86_64, help with networking
+improvements, documentation, LVM, the installer, and encrypted
+partition support, Piter Punk for udev and slackpkg work, Stuart
+Winter for help with linuxdoc-tools, Heinz Wiesinger for helping
+to clean up the Qt build script, and other stuff, Erik Jan Tromp
+for updating the populate_tftpboot.sh script in the PXE install
+to work with the new package formats, and instructing us on the
+correct use of umlaut \ö/, Amritpal Bath for coordinating torrents
+for the release, suggesting fixes and improvements, and trying to
+keep me sane (good luck), Robby Workman for docs, X, Xfce, wicd,
+his work with the team at slackbuilds.org, and helping to keep
+tons of other packages updated, mrgoblin for troubleshooting the
+installer and being on call to help in the middle of my night
+(handy having someone from .nz on the team!), and lots of fixes
+here and there, Karl Magnus Kolstoe for letting me know when I
+needed to sleep, NetrixTardis and element-x for helping with
+bandwidth and trackers for the release (and assorted testing and
+Q/A), Fred Emmott for so graciously assisting with obstacles we
+encountered porting to x86_64, 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.
+
+As always, thanks to my wife Andrea for putting up with
+development that began to stretch to every waking hour and
+deadlines being pushed back for one reason or another way too
+many times.  We'll try to get a little more family time over
+the next month or so.  Hi Briah!
+
+Have fun!  :-)
+
+Pat Volkerding <volkerdi@slackware.com>
+