It's that time again! After many months of development and careful testing, we are proud to announce the release of Slackware version 13.0!

We are sure you'll agree that the improvements made in this release more than warrant the major version bump up from the 12.x series. We've done our best to bring the latest technology to Slackware while still maintaining the stability and security that you have come to expect. Slackware is well known for it's simplicity and the fact that we try to bring software to you in the condition that the authors intended.

Probably the biggest change is the addition of an official 64-bit port. While the 32-bit (x86) version continues to be developed, this release brings to you a complete port to 64-bit (x86_64). We know that many of you have been waiting eagerly for this, and once you try it you'll see it was well worth the wait.

Slackware 13.0 brings many updates and enhancements, among which you'll find two of the most advanced desktop environments available today: Xfce 4.6.1, a fast and lightweight but visually appealing and easy to use desktop environment, and KDE 4.2.4, a recent stable release of the new 4.2.x series of the award-winning K Desktop Environment. We continue to make use of HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) which allows 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. Properly set up, Slackware's desktop should be suitable for any level of Linux experience.