I was on current from 12.0 and quietly and peacefully arrived at 12.2. I have distribution media for 12.1 and 12.2, though.

When I read what Patrick wrote about current in 12.2 release docs, I switched to 12.2 but still installed KDE 4.2. Now, with 4.2.1 in the current trunk and the desire to have a look on XFCE 4.6, I will go current again in violation of Patrick's warnings.

My impression is that actually one should use current whenever an extra bug is not critical and people should be encouraged to use current whenever possible, not warned against it. If not, where will bug reports come from (I assume the bug reports are necessary)?

There is no problem with Slackware usage per se, just possibly some misunderstanding of the intended usage on my part.

I also stumbled over Python 3. If I just upgrade Python to 3, existing .py files may not run since 3 is a breaking release. Is there any official/standard/common way to handle this in Slackware, like Gentoo slots?

There's a Python 3 SlackBuild for 12.2, that doesn't interfere with 2.5 ( that's what it says on the SB page, haven't tried it myself).

A lot of people use current to test as is. The warnings are necessary as other distros have a current branch which is deemed to be stable. These users may find problems and not realize current is officially a testing release. They would possibly form an incorrect opinion as to the stability of Slackware as a result.

I think people should be warned; It is a testing ground, and people should be (made) aware of that, as in that it actually may break your system. It probably won't, but you'll need to make sure you know how to fix your problems if they do arise and are important enough. If you don't have the means and skills to fix your problems, you should not use the -current. Also, if you're not able to analyze what's exactly going wrong there's little added value.

It reminds me of those days when I just started as the Sysop at a school and one of the students came to my desk and said "my computer doesn't work". I asked him "What doesn't work?" and he said "nothing! it does absolutely nothing.", so I went to his desk to check if some cable was loose and when I came there the computer was running happily; except that the coax cable was not really able to handle 30 computers booting simultaneously and inherently the system was not given a network address. A simple reboot was all that was needed to fix it. (ofc)

In short: vague error reports, while Pat no doubt is able to solve them, cost so much more time that it's hardly advisable to ask for a live test. Besides, there are nice automated test scripts available nowadays, which (I think) can find most of the common problems.

My belief is that testing is good and great, but only as long as you know what you're actually testing and how you should be testing it etc... Otherwise: if things won't work, don't complain.

Thanks! It is either new or I missed it last time I checked.

It should work - just renames idle to idle3.0 and so on to resolve conflicts.

Ideally, if things don't work, try to find a solution and report it back to the Slackware team

I use -current on two machines, but would not put it on a production server or on the desktop my wife uses.
Things have stopped working in the past following -current (but lately it has been quite stable).
If you don't mind running the risk of having yelling customers / wife / kids / neighbors about something not working, you can use -current for testing, otherwise: stick to the stable branch.

Sorry, but I quite disagree with that.

I will not stop people using -current if they really want to. But I am aware that -current is a development version and reason it like this:

"IF people want to use -current, they should be wise enough to know what the dangers are". There is nothing wrong with warning people against -current. Besides a warning is *not* "You should not run it."

However, hanging out on irc in the various slackware channels, shows me a large percentage of people just *will* *not* read[1][2]. Things in the -current tree will be documented as good as possible. But still we get a fair number of "oh -current borked this" or "i upgraded to $ammountofpackages from -current and now it won't work."

I agree with you, that yes; it's good to have a large number of users test -current, but one has to take into account the quality of bug reports as well. Just overloading Patrick with "duntworkfixitnoawkthxbai" emails is hardly conclusive, nor productive.

For me personally, a good bug report would contain: "what was broken, how it broke, how it can be fixed, how it can be repoduced and possible patches."

Too many people in the world already suffer from the "New Shiny Version Syndrome". And god forbid that someone would be unwise enough to install -current on a production machine (and don't say it doesn't happen, cause we all know there are people that will).

just my 2 pence.


[1] - This is even more evident when taken in account the output of pom(6).
[2] - When I installed -current on a ratarse old laptop for 12.2, there were five or six things actually not working. By carefully reading, and rereading the CHANGES_AND_HINTS.TXT it was all solvable.

jsut wondering.. i'm new to slack, i got it installed.. just need that final step to make it current with all the good new stuff

thanks

as an opensource fans, the one that believe that the stability of what we got in "beta" is as stable like what redmond boys called "final release", I never care that it will ruin my machine or not, I use some beta, some even alpha, of course not in my work machine.
But when I try the KDE 4 from current, then I realize why they refer it as unstable. I always got my system hang after resize kde panel. My system was so standard before kde 4, no tweaking at all.
I can tolerate a hang in, let say mp3 player software or something, but for a desktop manager? That's vital.

1) man slackpkg

2) select some current mirror.

3) install new packages, upgrade all existing packages, and delete what is not in the official set.

4) you will get new kernel, so update initrd, if any, and lilo

5) reinstall that you installed which is kernel related, like ATI drivers or VirtualBox.

6) reboot.

You will get lists of packages to be installed/upgraded/deleted on step 3. The process looks fool proof, but you better look through the lists anyway.

Technically switching to current is an upgrade from 12.2 to 12.3, which is no different to an upgrade from 12.0 to 12.1 or from 12.1 to 12.2, so everything written in the docs about upgrades fully applies.

Theoretically the upgrade may be more complicated, like the upgrade from 11 to 12.0 (if I remember correctly, the 12.0 media documents that), but for now it is that simple.

I did that yesterday and it was about 1G download, so you may want to check that slackpkg does not delete downloaded files after installation.

Well, if it was me I would start as follows:
1) READ and UNDERSTAND this: CURRENT.WARNING.

2) READ the UPGRADE.TXT

3) READ the CHANGES_AND_HINTS.TXT

4) READ upgradepkg(8)

5) READ slackpkg(8) and slackpkg.conf(5). ( See also the post made by AGer above)

6) Know how find(1) and diff(1) work and use them.

Personally I am still of the believe that if you really want to run -current, you should not need to ask. IF you have to ask, you're not ready.

Thanks everybody for answers, they were helpful.