Here is the deal. I have grown to love Gnome. Conversely I have grown to love slackware. Recently I have gone to debian sarge but I do not like having some much done for me. I am also not a fan of swaret/slackpkg/slapt-get tool either. Tonight I am headed back to slack after getting my partitions set up how I like them. I seems that Pat is dropping gnome support. I do not like DLG as it seems to mess with things too much and it runs slow and bloated on fairly good hardware. In my case that hardware is an Athlon 2400 box with 1 gb SDRAM and 40 GB HDD. So, tonite I am going to install slack 10. Upgrade by hand to current. This brings me to questions number 1

1. Do I need to follow the directions in UPGRADE.TXT to do this or can I update by downloading all the curernt tree to home and upgradepkg from there?

Now, I am sure there are some out there in the same boat as far a Gnome v KDE goes. Putting just plain prefence aside, what are the advantages of KDE over gnome? I plan on installing KDE 3.3.2 from one of the KDE mirrors along with my new install. I guess I will make it work since I like slack too much to give it up.

2. Any thoughts from the users what the advantages are?

Thanks in advance.

I can't comment on why I like KDE over Gnome, other than I found Gnome to be slow and clunky. The KDE 3.2 series is pretty nice.

Follow the upgrade.txt instructions. I tried an upgradepkg a few weeks ago on my laptop and it was a God-awful mess. I ended up backing up the data and doing a complete reinstall.

Damien

Can't say it's "better" just suits me better.

Just can't get into the Gnome themes. Dunno what it is about Gnome that I don't like, just like KDE better.

I am in the same boat as you. I prefer gnome, don't really like dropline but want to stick with Slackware. I started using KDE the last few weeks since it sounded like I would have to do so anyway. I guess we will get used to it. The menus are better in KDE I guess. I can just advise to try it for awhile. It ain't gnome but it's better than nothing ;-)

Well, tonight is the night. Thanks for the input. Hopefully i'll be reporting back with good news later on....

Tough questions. As far as upgrading, you should really do some research and see which upgrades are really going to help. I tried swaret a couple months ago and let it upgrade everything to current. I ran into so many problems that I started over with a fresh Slack 10 install. After that fiasco, I've only upgraded what's necessary. And I've used removepkg and installpkg to do it, although I've read that that's essentially what upgradepkg does. Who knows. Anyway, I'm a firm believer that upgrading isn't necessary until there have been enough changes that it either 1) directly affects security/usability or is required by dependencies, or 2) is necessary for hardware support. I understand the allure of running the most current setup, but most of the time the difference between 10 and current packages is essentially just the version number. Granted, there are some cases where there are significant improvements, but it's probably best to figure out which packages offer those kinds of improvements, resolve their dependencies (if any) and upgrade selectively. But if you have your heart set on running Slack current, I'd say definitely check out UPGRADE.TXT--it's there for a reason.

As far as the KDE vs. Gnome debate, it really boils down to personal preference. They're both fairly mature desktop environments. Both can handle some system config (although I wouldn't trust either over the CLI). They are both pretty and bloated--although despite the bigger bloat factor, KDE does seem quicker than Gnome. I use both. I use Gnome at school because they didn't even bother installing KDE and they're stuck on the 0.1.14 version of Fluxbox. I use KDE at home when I want to play around with eye candy. And I use Fluxbox cvs most of the time...basically whenever I want breakneck speed and complete control of my window manager.

And one last thought... If you're installing KDE from the mirrors, why not have a go at compiling the latest Gnome? I'm sure it's a major headache getting Gnome up and running from source rather than packages, but from the looks of the site there's pretty good documentation for building it from scratch. And it's gotta be better than Dropline.

I am going with the upgrade.txt. methood just becuase it'll be interesting from the CLI. Building Gnome for source, from what i have read, is a PIA. If it's a pain for Pat V., It'll be hell from me. Anyhow, like I said, I will report back later with my new system....(knock on wood).

Good luck and let us know how it goes. Regarding the Gnome build: when I made that last comment, I hadn't looked in the ftp directories. There's an UNBELIEVABLE number of tar.gz's to unpack and build. Even looking at the basic build order, there's probably at least 50 or so core components that have to be built. Ridiculous. I'm surprised _anyone_ bothers with it.

Well it worked. I am inside the system now. I like it alot. So far. There is this weird sound issue (won't work at all). I used slackpkg to upgrade my slack 10 base install and add the 2.6.7 kernel. You can upgrade by package group which is easy and I know what I installed. Worked like a charm. KDE worked at the first go as well as Nvidia. I would say it's an overall success.