After long last, the ultimate in vanilla Linux distros—Slackware—makes a new release, with some interesting new features. It’s impossible to list even close to all of the changes, so here are some of the more major changes that I’m aware of:

• Linux 2.6.24.5
  2.6.24 introduced a tickless kernel for more platforms—including AMD64— for better power conservation, new wireless drivers to take advantage of the recently rewritten wireless stack, file capabilities, and much more. Not really new anymore; 2.6.25 is the latest. See what’s new since the last release of Slackware here, here, and here.
• X.org 7.3.
  This features version 1.4 of the X server, and you no longer technically need an xorg.conf file because autodetection is more or less complete. RandR 1.2 support means display hotplugging and online rotation and mode (resolution/color depth) changes, and input devices can now be hotplugged. See what’s new here. Also, although it wasn’t part of the X.org 7.3 release, it seems that the Slackware developers slipped in radeonhd for AMD/ATI users.
• GTK+ 2.12.
  Support for composting effects, a completely redone tooltip system, XML interface definitions, new widgets, prettier stock icons, and more make this an awesome release for developers and users alike. See a more complete list of new features here.
• NTFS-3G.
  This has been long awaited by me. It allows for full read/write mounting of NTFS partitions at long last.
• pygtk, pygobject, pycairo, and python-dbus, have all been added, opening the doors to a wider selection of programs and development opportunities.
• Wireless firmware has been added for zd1211 (most USB wireless sticks), rt71w, rt61, Intel 4965, Intel 3945, ipw2200, and ipw2100, so that many more wireless devices should work out of the box.
• Liberation fonts have been added for your typing pleasure.

Of course, there’s much more. In ascending levels of depth, you can find out more about the release here, here, and here. I intend to do a full review of it in a couple days.