by George Whittaker One of Linux's oldest surviving distributions is moving closer to its next major release. Slackware 16 Alpha 1 became available on September 5, 2026, marking the first formal alpha milestone on the road toward Slackware Linux 16. The release follows a major rebuild of Slackware-current using a substantially newer GNU toolchain and brings together several upgrades that have accumulated since Slackware 15.0 arrived more than four years ago. The alpha combines Linux 6.18 LTS, GCC 16.2.0, glibc 2.44, GNU Binutils 2.47, KDE Plasma 6, and numerous updated user-space packages while retaining much of the deliberately traditional architecture that has distinguished Slackware for decades. For longtime Slackware users, Alpha 1 is particularly significant because it provides the clearest indication yet that the lengthy Slackware 16 development cycle is moving toward an eventual stable release. Slackware 16 Finally Reaches Alpha Slackware doesn't operate according to the predict