I have a machine I am looking to test out the -current release w/KDE 4.1 on.

My question is:

Is there a way to start directly with the -current install, or do I have to do a normal 12.1 install and then perform all the updates to get it to -current state as per the upgrade.txt file?

Thanks in advance for any insight.

You can create a burnable ISO out of the packages in -current using Alien Bob's mirror-slackware-current.sh script. That seems to be exactly what you're looking for. There may or may not be some 'quirks' when using this approach (if it were me, I would just install 12.1 and upgrade to -current), but I believe it should work, and people who have successfully used this approach will likely chime in later.

It would certainly be a lot faster to install directly to -current, and much easier. If you have another machine on the network, you could even share out the -current tree over NFS and use the USB installer on the other machine.

Personally I maintain a rsync copy of the current tree - this has advantages as the tree is in a constant state of flux and it's easy to update when needed.

There are iso "snapshots" available here if you just want a quick way to get started although the one they are hosting as of now is dated 11/4/08 and so is not totally up to date. There were a lot of changes made 7/11/08 which won't be included.

The current tree is a moving target and is meant to be for testing the latest changes made to the next release version. This is not something to be installed and then left as fixes and updates are constantly applied. Obviously any feedback from bugs on an out of date install will be of no value.

It is by definition not meant to be installed on production equipment as no stability can be expected. In saying this the tree is remarkably stable but you should check out the CURRENT.WARNING given here and also the Changelog.

As T3slider said - you may mirror current using Alien Bob's scripts which have the facility to create an ISO from the mirrored tree or serve them up via the nfs/ftp/http facilities of setup. This is the approach I would recommend. Then you can rsync update the tree regularly and apply the changes to the live system when they are rolled out.

Thanks for the advice guys...

I will give all the solutions mentioned above a try. I had previously been doing it the "long way" of installing 12.1 then doing the updates to -current. I Was just seeing if there was a more efficient way.

But the points brought up make a good argument for doing it as such.

Thanks again.