hello,

I currently use slack9.1 with kernel 2.6.xx
I have noticed that the slackware current contains the latest version of xfree ( 4.4.0. )

I would like to know if there are some good reasons to upgrade xfree ?

and if it is what is best way to proceed ? To my opinion I would do like this :

- boot in text mode,
- remove all packages related to xfree4.3 ( i.e. in the x/ dir of slackware packages )
- install the latest xfree4.4 packages
- reboot

I currently use 'fvwm2' as WM and my card is nvidia's
do I need to reinstall fvwm2 and ( or ) nvidia module ( the private one ) ?

did I forget something ? I heard on other threads that some font problem occured ?

thanks for your advices

The method I used to upgrade xfree was:
1. Download the packages to a new directory
2. Log in to the command line interface as root
3. Change to the directory containing the packages
4. Type ' upgradepkg --install-new --verbose *.tgz'

See Chapter 16 at http://www.slackware.com/book/ for further details

I don't see any good reason to upgrade to 4.4.0, I did that but after discover that some programs crashes xfree, I downgraded to 4.3.0. Now all work well as before (I have a Nvidia Gforce 440MX)

well, I did it last saturday : xfree4.3 -> xfree4.4
and more generally slackware9.1 -> slackware current

this is true that updating xfree may lead to bad working especially if you have a nvidia graphic card and use the proprietary nvidia driver, because some incompatibilities may rise
between old and new software,

in particular gcc has changed, so each of your own application should be recompiled
to ensure best compatibility, this is true for nvidia's driver as well as the kernel ( if it is not a
slack pre-compiled one )

so the method I used to getthing work is

- install everything
- recompile and install kernel
- recompile and reinstall nvidia driver
- recompile other software

and things works ! ( OK... I do not say I have not tried everything yet, I use fvwm2 as WM )


have fun
deb75