Well, I have this one machine I've been installing different OS's on.

Today, I did a fresh install of Slackware 9.0. I opted to make windowmaker the default.
Then I launched the default Mozilla 1.3 and went to www.swaret.org and got the latest swaret.

I ran installpkg swaret-1.6.2-noarch-1.tgz. Changed the /etc/swaret.conf.new to /etc/swaret.conf. I then edited that and changed it to VERSION=current and then commented out all of the EXCLUDE lines.

Then, of course, swaret --update and then swaret --upgrade.

I select to install/upgrade everything. Man, I'm glad I have DSL now!! Even if it is only a 512k connection.

Anyway, the thing ran for about 7 hours or more, about 675M of stuff. After it was all done, I rebooted, ran the nvidia installer again, and voila!!!

The kernel upgraded to 2.4.25 from 2.4.20. Mozilla is now 1.6. Slackware is now 9.1. Etc...

Of course, I may still run into some conflicts, but I was surprised that the whole swaret upgrade thing went off without a hitch.

Thank you so much for that very informative post. I have been wondering about swaret myself (only I was going to use CD sets and not the internet to update). Your information was to the point, exact and very helpful.

did swaret updrade your kernal or did you?

Swaret did it. I just didn't exclude it.

From the /etc/swaret.conf file:
#
# Basic Exclude
#
#EXCLUDE=kernel
#EXCLUDE=lilo swaret
#EXCLUDE=MANIFEST.bz2$
#EXCLUDE=.*dl$ .*PACKAGER$ .*MYBUILD$
#
# Advanced Exclude
# Syntax: KEYWORD[DONT_EXCLUDE_ME_KEYWORD1,DONT_EXCLUDE_ME_KEYWORD2,...]
# Example: kde-i18n[nl,en_GB] koffice-i18n[nl,en_GB]
#
#EXCLUDE=kde-i18n[nl,en_GB] koffice-i18n[nl,en_GB]
#

I ended up doing the samething as Itsjustme a couple of months ago, when I installed slack and it went without a hitch here also. I come from mandrake using urpmi and swaret seems to work even better. I want to do more things manually in slack but swaret gave me a good jumpstart on things I wanted to upgrade. To sum it up Swaret ROCKS!!