Wed Feb 2 18:22:01 PST 2005

Released Slackware 10.1 stable.

Thanks to everyone who helped out with this release, and especially to the
folks at GUS-BR and SlackSec who helped (and continue to help) with handling
security issues for the last few months, to Andreas Liebschner for keeping
the website updated and running smoothly, to Theresa Elam for all her hard
work running store.slackware.com, to the folks on alt.os.linux.slackware for
pointing out bugs and offering suggestions, to the people on ##slackware
that I met on IRC (and some again in later emails), to Justin, Kyle, and Dean
from the Linux User Group of Rochester, MN who I got to hang out with while
"vacationing" at the Mayo Clinic, to everyone who signed my online Christmas
card (one of the nicest things I ever got), and to all the kind and patient
members of the Slackware community. I hope all of you will enjoy this new
Slackware release.

Have fun! :-)

Your Slackware Maintainer,

Pat

Sat Jan 22 18:12:37 PST 2005
"Goes to show, you don't ever know"

Hi folks!
I'm going to call this Slackware 10.1 beta 1, because we're at a state
where things are relatively stable. There have been a great deal of
improvements over Slackware 10.0, and it would be best to get this out
before trying to tackle the major changes for Slackware 11.

As far as I know, there are no serious security issues remaining in the
-current tree at this time. There may still be a few image decoder bugs, but
these seem to be crash bugs at worst, if even that. I've yet to hear of any of
them allowing remote access, or privilege escalation. I do not think they are
worth delaying a Slackware release over. I'd like to get to them, but my
condition is preventing this, and so I'm going to tell it like I think it is:
The sky is not really falling, regardless of what you read on BugTraq. If I
am missing anything major though, please mail to security at slackware.com and
let me know about it. As always, I want this to be a high-quality release.

And about my status... I didn't want to have to bring this up again, but
since a lot of people are under the impression that I've recovered and I'm
just fine (and are beginning to make the usual demands of my time ;-), I'd
better clarify what's going on. Especially since I'm not exactly fine.

Back on Thu Nov 25, I posted in the ChangeLog that I thought I had infective
endocarditis (and was promptly flamed for self-diagnosing again). After so
much beating around the bush without getting a referral to a cardiologist, I
finally called one myself and waited the two weeks it takes to get in. He is
a top-notch doctor and heart surgeon (I was very lucky to be able get in to see
him), and with no planting of any suggestion from me whatsoever came to the
conclusion that it seemed to be infective endocarditis. I'm still waiting for
more test results, but it looks like I finally have someone working on my side.
So, lets hope that they get some conclusive diagnostics (I get another echo on
Wednesday), that I make it until they do, and that it's not too late for this
to be treated without a need for valve (or heart) replacement. I've had a
rough couple of weeks (well, months really, but especially the last two weeks),
and I have to say that while it's good to have a near-death experience every
couple of years to keep your head clear and your focus on the important things
in life, having one every morning is too often. With that frequency, they
start to become a distraction. ;-)