Today, July 3, 2016, the developers of the Slackware-based Vectorlinux GNU/Linux operating system have announced the release of the Beta build of the upcoming VectorLinux 7.2 release.

It took the developers nine months to move from the Alpha stage of development to Beta for the VectorLinux 7.2 distribution, which probably will be based on the recently released Slackware 14.2 operating system. The release is currently distributed in two flavors, VectorLinux 7.2 Light with the IceWM window manager, and VectorLinux 7.2 Standard with the more customizable Xfce 4.12 desktop environment.

Besides shipping with the IceWM window manager, the VectorLinux 7.2 Light edition also includes the SeaMonkey open-source suite of Internet applications (web browser, email and news client, and chat client). On the other hand, it looks like the VectorLinux 7.2 Standard flavor is using the more resource-hungry Mozilla Firefox web browser. Best of all, both editions ships without the systemd init system.

"Both versions can be installed with our semi-automatic GUI installer or thru a text based installer depending on your needs. We feature all the latest linux based software from Kodi to LibreOffice all easily installed with our GUI or text based package manager," said the VectorLinux developers in today's announcement.

The VectorLinux developers need your help to take the VectorLinux 7.2 Beta release for a test drive and submit any bugs you might find or feature requests in the forums so that they take action immediately and fix any issues and annoyances before the final version of the operating system gets out, which looks like it's not that far away.

They want to make VectorLinux 7.2 the perfect Slackware-based computer operating system as possible, but without your help it will be a little more difficult. Therefore, you can download the VectorLinux 7.2 Beta Light and Standard ISO images for 64-bit and 32-bit hardware architectures right now via our website, just please try to keep in mind that's still a pre-release version.