Looks like k3b is hanging after finishing ripping an audio cd to flac.
Doing a "ps -ef |grep flac" shows that the external flac child-process it invokes has ended.
This was working prior to BETA1, though I'm not sure if it was the k3b updates in BETA1 or anything subsequent that broke it.
update:
Found a similar report on Ubuntu forums for 10.04 but using the lame encoder. As k3b used the 'external encoder plugin" for both lame and flac it looks like the same issue and it's clearly not slackware specific.
Ubuntu bug report (no info as of yet):
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...3b/+bug/576563