Hi all,

I'm in a quandary. When I read the release notes on Slackware 12, it sounds like a good idea to upgrade. However, when I think of the time and work I've put into setting up Slackware 11, and the fact that it works really well, I'm not enthusiastic about doing everything over again.

Add all this to the fact that my hardware is year 2000 vintage, and that I don't seem to need a new features, and the incentive to upgrade is pretty low.

Is anyone else holding off? If so, why?

Regards,

-Drew

P.S. I have a laptop with OpenSUSE 10.2 on it that I'd like to install Slackware 12 on as a new installation after wiping SUSE off of it. I can see many benefits to using the new Slackware as a fresh installation.

I am not upgrading....yet. Just because I, like you , have spent an awesome amount of time getting my system the way I like it. However I do have a vmware'd install of 12 and love it!!
Thanks Pat and crew

i have a laptop here that near pre dates the ark and slack 12 works ok on it, only advise i can give you is that if you dont want to update then dont, if slack 11.0 is working fine for you then best to leave things alone.

I was nervous about upgrading too since I'd spent too much time (ask my girlfriend! ) configuring mine just how I like it. But using the UPGRADE.TXT file, and taking my time, the upgrade went very smoothly. It might be something to do with this being my third upgrade - 10.2 > 11.0 > 12.0, but all have been painless so far.

All my existing programs still work, but now I have all the shiny new bells and whistles too

As a precaution, before upgrading I used the Slax liveCD and dd to make an image of my installation and saved it onto an external hard drive (which I unplug during the installation). That way, if the upgrade totally borks my system, I can restore to how I was just before I upgraded with a single command.

But, as the adage goes, if it ain't broke, don't fix it!

I tend to backup /etc and rc files in ~ regularly. It makes it a lot easier to get a working clean install when you have some settings to work from.

I keep my partition with /home on it and all the extra packages I've installed on another partition.

Hi,

My working systems don't get upgrades. Why?

Most of my servers are still using Slackware 10.1 & 11.0 with the 2.4 kernel. I've got development systems to install new levels of the OS of choice.

I've been using -current for a while on a bench top system. Great for me!

The way I structure my systems I can and will do a fresh install on this system to see how and what breaks.

That's the fun of Slackware!

Oh upgrades... When you're running slackware-current for over 2 years now you don't even know what that word means

And what are those bells and whistles?
I installed Slackware 12.0 and had to get and upgrade 2 packages I use all days: FVWM and Mutt.
I don't use KDE, but my wife does and she didn't noticed any difference - altought X it is a little bit slower now, and I still don't know why. I tried to get compiz working to show her some 'bells and whistles'... but with no success. So, for our desktops, 12.0 it's the same old Slackware - which is a good thing.

On web servers we have Slackware 11.0 and we're planning to upgrade in August - we run some dozens of web sites and moving from apache 1.3.* to apache 2.2.* is a move wich require some extra work.

Have slackware 11 and 12 on this system. Soon as I get 12.0 tweaked and move over everything from 11 might loose 11.0 and use the drive as storage . Still getting some odd udev-trigger errors on boot, working them out now... might just need to custom compile the kernel.

For my 3 machines, the upgrades were as follows. On the whole, I'm a huge believer in the "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" philosophy but each machine was considered differently.

My Laptop: I upgraded. I had always wanted better ACPI support, which an upgrade gave me, so it fixed a broken facet. Despite some bumps in the road, (I didn't read UPGRADE.TXT ) I love it. For the first time on my Thinkpad 600X, I finally have full powersaving (after a tailored kernel recompile). 2.6 also seems to yeild better performance than 2.4.

My dev machine: Change is only necessary when necessary, so upgrading is not always feasible. It probably won't see the upgrade unless I see the need for the newer glibc libraries for something. Seeing that I mainly compile across architecture, I don't think upgrading would be ideal.

My "media center" machine: The approach with this one was a little different. I use the "Newer, Better, Faster" mentality, so if I can run my MMOs (WoW, Ragnarok, etc.), edit movies captured from MiniDV, and watch TV (TV cards are fun), and I get better performance, then upgrading is ideal. The new hal and dbus support is great as I have USB drives a go-go. Also, Gaming seems to be smoother (probably psychological, I admit) and I'm enjoying the newer KDE. Upgrading this machine was a good call.

Every version of Slack I've used (from 10.1 on) has been reliable and sound. Kudos to Pat and his team. If an upgrade is feasible, I highly recommend it.

I have a laptop that I used for OS install torture tests. It has seen lots of Linux OSs, but Slackware is always a main stay.

Anyway, I installed 10.2 on it, then upgraded to 11.0 and finally to 12.0. A few things started happening and I didn't really want to start looking for possible solutions. So I ended up wiping out Slackware off from it and used the usbboot.img method to install Slackware 12. I had already downloaded Slack12's /slackware folder to the winxp partition. So using the USB stick method was great. Saved me a CD/DVD!

I was thinking of HAL (or whatever that automount thing is called) and Compiz specifically. Other than that, you're right - much the same, which is a good thing