Barry Kauler, the creator of the Puppy Linux computer operating system, has had the great pleasure of announcing today, November 17, the release and immediate availability for download of Puppy Linux 6.3 "Slacko".

According to Mr. Kauler, Puppy Linux 6.3 "Slacko" has been built from the binary TXZ packages of the Slackware 14.1 GNU/Linux operating system, and it is available, for the first time, as two Live ISO images, one for each of the supported hardware architectures, 32-bit and 64-bit (Intel (IA64) or AMD (amd64)).

"This is distinct from Puppy 6.0.x, which is built from Ubuntu Trusty Tahr binary packages, coordinated by Phil Broughton. Mick coordinated Puppy 5.7.x which is also built with Slackware packages," said Barry Kauler. "For the first time, Puppy is released in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions."

Here's what's new in Puppy Linux 6.3 "Slacko"

Prominent features of Puppy Linux 6.3 include Linux kernel 4.1.11 LTS shipped by default with built-in F2FS file system support, an alternative Linux kernel package from the long-term supported 3.18 series, as well as an updated "First Run" graphical user interface that brings visual enhancements and fixes annoying bugs.

Moreover, there's a new script called "change_kernels" that lets users easily change available Linux kernel packages, including Linux kernel 4.2.5, which is available from the default software repositories. A new graphical firewall and Samba for connecting to Windows shares on your network were also added.

Lastly, the JWM (Joe's Window Manager) window manager, which powers the default user interface of Puppy Linux has been updated to the latest version, bringing visual improvements, bugfixes to its configuration tools, and adding the PTheme global theme manager.  There are also overall GUI and icon improvements.

Numerous software have been updated to their latest versions available at the moment of the release of Puppy Linux 6.3. Among these, we can mention the Mozilla Firefox web browser, AbiWord word processor, MPlayer video player, Evince PDF viewer (replacement for ePDFView), Pmusic audio player.

Last but not least, the FFmpeg multimedia backend was also added in Puppy Linux 6.3 for out-of-the-box audio/video codecs support. Numerous other core components and applications have also been updated. Download Puppy Linux 6.3 "Slacko" for 64-bit and 32-bit computers right now from Softpedia.