Monday marked an important milestone for the Slackware Linux project (www.slackware.com) with the release of version 8.0.
What makes this release so significant is that less than three months ago the publisher of Slackware products, Berkley Software Design (BSDi), was acquired by Wind River (www.windriver.com) which decided not to continue with Slackware development.
"This isn't going to take out Slackware, though," remarked Patrick Volkerding, the project's founder, after the decision. "I'm working on setting up a company so we can handle the publishing ourselves."
In the spirit of free software, Slackware development has continued despite the withdrawal of direct commercial backing. The main FTP repository, ftp.slackware.com, moved to the VA Linux owned SourceForge (www.sourceforge.net) in late April.
Some recent software releases included in Slackware 8.0 are kernel 2.4.5, GNOME 1.4, KDE 2.1.2 and XFree86 4.1.0. Combined, these features make it the most current Linux distribution available today.
Slackware 8.0 is available for free download. Official Slackware 8.0 CDs, along with other products, are available directly from their online store.