How Do You Upgrade Slackware 12.2 To 64bit
 

So my main question is: now that slackware 64bit has been released to the public and can be used, is it just as easy as installing the packages and that's it, or are there other things that need to be done to upgrade to the 64bit version.

Also, as a side question, it's not too important, but does anyone know a general time frame for when slackware 13 will come out.? This year, next, I know when it is stable, etc. but what more needs to be done.

I know it's not what you are asking and may seem pedantic but regardless -
- it's not officially been "released" yet ! OK, a "current" version is available for download but these are pre-release testing versions and prone to change. No doubt update instructions will be made public when 13 is actually released.
Good luck with this one ! "When it's ready" has always been the reply. By taking this attitude Slackware is never pressed to an immovable deadline which is a good thing.

Slackware64 has not been released to the public. Slackware64-current has been released for testing. I am sure you know this already, but it is important to keep in mind that Slackware64 is still in development.

As far as 'upgrading' from 32 bit to 64 bit, I am not sure if there will be an easy way to do that. Perhaps there will be instructions similar to UPGRADE.TXT once it is indeed released. However, I imagine the same course of action will be to back up your data and reinstall, since any third party packages you compiled or built from a SlackBuild script will probably need to be recompiled anyway.

As far as when Slackware 13 will come out, only Patrick knows and he ain't tellin'. :-) It is probably a pretty safe bet that it will be out before the end of the year, however.

Thank you for the last part, that's what I was looking for, something general, so probably before the end of the year. Thanks. And I guess I wasn't clear, if it's been moved to testing, how do I go about installing the software to test everything. I'm pretty sure I can't just download everything and install the packages, I'm sure that would be disasterous, so how would I do it correctly.

You should search these forums for information on how to run Slackware -current. It has been discussed many, many, many times. :-) There are several methods. One way is to mirror the ftp tree and create an iso image using Eric Hameleer's excellent mirror-slackware-current.sh script. Other folks upgrade from a -stable release to -current using slackpkg. Regardless of the method, IMHO one should be pretty familiar with Slackware and the way it works before attempting to use -current.

You can also download -current iso's from here ftp://ftp.slackware.no/linux/slackwa...e-current-iso/

But like everyone else said, keep in mind that these are not official releases only for testing purposes.

For an upgrade to 64-bit, I highly recommend installing any 64-bit system from scratch, instead of trying to upgrade in place. Upgrading from 32 bit to 64 bit is not the same kind of journey as just upgrading to a new version in the same architecture.

You could try out slackware64-current. Many people are using it. While there are issues, as is typical with slackware, the -current is quite stable for most people as the next release approaches. Alternatively, you could install slamd64-12.2.

The approach I'm taking right now is I am setting up a dual-boot shared-filesystem arrangement combining both slackware-current and slackware64-current. Instead of separate partitions, there will be a shared partition. I do split my systems into separate partitions like /boot and /home and /usr and /var. In this case, I will still partition the same way, but each partition will be double sized and hold the respective files from both the 32 bit version and the 64 bit version, in subdirectories. The mounting will be done using the mount bind option to select the appropriate subdirectory in each partition. I will have to do a little of my own hacking to make this work. Slackware is great for doing things like this.