in case you haven't heard, slackware 13 supports 64 bit architectures.

over time i've spent a lot of effort compiling, installing, and configuring specialized software on my slamd64-12.2 system.

if i install slackware 13 on top of my current filesystem, will i be
able to run the 64 bit packages left over from slamd64-12.2? anyone have any experience with trying to "upgrade" slamd64 with slackware 13?

noticed the slamd64 site was down. i wonder if slamd64 has thrown in the towel.

The slamd64 website is offline at times but http://forums.slamd64.com/ is usually available. Just not today apparently.

My estimate is that you should be able to migrate from Slamd64 to Slackware64 quite painlessly. Custom-installed applications should theoretically still be working afterwards unless library versions have changed. (Don't take my word for it... I never installed Slamd64 let alone I know what happens to added stuff).

Eric

i made the plunge and upgraded slamd64-12.2 to slackware64 13.0. here is my report:

with a new kernel one needs to re-install graphics drivers. for nvidia (geforce 9800 gtx+),
this was painless - just used the nvidia slackbuilds on slackbuild.org. worked immediately!

the latest konsole looks cooler than previous versions, i must say.

the latest firefox wasn't executing. with pkgtool i removed firefox and pango, then i put in my slamd64-12.2 dvd, mounted it, and installed the older firefox and pango. (although it might be worth it to get the latest firefox running - for all i know it is a simple fix)

i went through a similar process with k3b and amarok, reverting to previous versions.

when i got to virtualbox, things got ugly. the front-end opened, but the machines wouldn't run because a new kernel requires a new kernel module. VirtualBox 2.1.4 does not support kernel 2.6.29.6, so i downloaded the slackbuilds for 3.0.4. it would not build (stock slackware64 doesn't build 32 bit packages), so i stumbled upon some compatibility libraries which worked for me (located in http://anorien.warwick.ac.uk/mirrors...t/slackware64/). a quick way of installing them is downloading the entire directory slackware64 (with wget -r http://anorien.warwick.ac.uk/mirrors...t/slackware64/). then, from the directory slackware64, open pkgtool, select other, and type in a-compat32. pkgtool will prompt you to install each package. repeat process for the remaining directories.

finally, i could build virtualbox. however, /etc/rc.d/rc.vboxdrv setup (the command to build the module) was failing! i uselessly hacked at this for 2 days. i never fixed it. instead, i downloaded a binary, multi-distro version of virtualbox which was able to build the module. here is the link: http://download.virtualbox.org/virtu...inux_amd64.run

for kde 4.something to work well you'll need to remove your kde 3.5 base package, as well as some of it's component packages. all i can say about kde 4.something is that it looks heavy. good thing we have xwmconfig.

overall, after a few small hiccups i was able to achieve a full transition from slamd64-12.2 to slackware64 13.0. thanks, developers, for such an inspirational release!

*worth noting: with slackware64 13 dhcpcd can connect to several wireless networks to which i was unable to connect with slamd64 12.2!