I have recently installed slackware 13.0, and found kde-4.2.x on it. Slackware-current caught my eye, and some google search pointed me towards this -> DistroWatch.com - Running Slackware "Current"

Now, before i update, i have some questions/concerns:

• Should i be looking out for "warnings" before installing slackware-current? (like - "you may not get support", "this is unstable", "packages here may not qualify for the final release")
• Is there an official RC 13.1, 13.2.... 13.x release i can stick to for a more stable (than -current) as well as relativly up-to-date system (though i can currently see 12.1, 12.2, nothing really for the 13.0 release)
• Is there a way i can i hold back the kernel from upgrading, while following the "slackpkg update" method explained on the distrowatch link? I had a wild time with other distros getting my BCM4312 (wireless) to get working.. it finally did on slackware 13.0 with the broadcom-sta package from slackbuilds.org. (Changelog for kernel 2.6.32.12 has something on BCM43XX that kept nagging me)

-current or no -current, there are more package mgmt concerns i have to share. I installed almost the complete slackware system on my laptop. Now that contains quite a lot of alternative programs for a particular task - like:

• firefox, seamonkey, lynx, elinks for web browsing,
• irssi, xchat, etc for irc
• mutt, thunderbird, kmail, alpine etc for email

...etc., you know what i mean..

One could easily remove these 'extra' packages using a removepkg command. But is there a way to cleanly remove the dependencies associated with these utilities? I mean something like 'apt-get autoremove' in kubuntu.

Slackware -current is the current development stream for the next Slackware release. Consider it to be beta level code, although it almost always a stable beta.

Pat will eventually call -current a release candidate for the next Slackware version. That will be mentioned in the Changelogs in -current. (In fact, that happened on May 6.)

You will have to read the release notes to determine if you can skip upgrading the kernel.

There is no package dependency management scheme in stock Slackware.

Hi,

I suggest that you also look at the other text files for '-current'. That can do more than physical harm.

Hopefully some of what I say will help. ;v)

-current is now also known as 13.1 RC 1, or Release Candidate 1. Typically what happens is the .0 release, followed by updates to -current, which, when stable enough, becomes .1, then updates to -current until that becomes .2, etc. To answer your question directly, -current is _almost_ 13.1 but not quite. Be sure to read CHANGES_AND_HINTS, ChangeLog.txt (which names this -current 13.1 RC 1), CHANGES, and RELEASE_NOTES before you upgrade.

Holding back the kernel: In this upgrade set I think not. Some of the X windows changes from 13.0 to 13.1 require some of the changes in the kernel used from 13.0 to 13.1. Check out this area carefully if you want to upgrade slackware but not upgrade the kernel. Another thread in here at this time has a guy with the same BMC wireless as you. Here's a link:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...cker-d-807827/

When I upgraded from 13.0 to -current, 4 big things bit me:
1) Changes in libata changed /dev/hd* to /dev/sd*. To make that switch successfully lilo must be changed to point to /dev/sd* while your system is booted as /dev/hd*. Check out the root= option to lilo. What you'll do is add the appropriate root= line, reboot, and then remove the line. If your laptop HD is currently /dev/sd<something> then you don't have to worry about this.
2) My initrd image had to be upgraded. Getting items 1 and 2 correct before that reboot is tricky, but possible. If you don't get it right recovery is even more tricky. The fact that I am typing this shows that it _can_ be done, though it wasn't really easy.
3) I got bit by the move of libblkid from one package to another. I didn't use the correct slackpkg sequence of commands and ended up booting from a 13.0 disk to recover my system. Here's the link to help for that:
http://eatingsecurity.blogspot.com/2...t-updates.html
4) KDE's formats of local user data changed. I had to delete my .kde directory, my /tmp/kde-<local user> directory, my .cache directory, and some other stuff to get things to work right.

These "extra" packages are really just the ones that came with Slackware 13.0, right? Since -current is a full distribution (just with some stuff not quite working right ;v) ) you don't need to worry about these things upgrading or not, they will, it is just that they might have some bugs that prevent them from working.

-current is for the "bleeding-edge", risk-taking, and probably shouldn't really be done on those systems that are required for daily use. The system I'm using right now is only 1 of 5 or so slackware versions I run at home. My "main" home network machine is still slackware 10.0 because that works well on that hardware. If you're concerned, and you rightfully are, about keeping your system as stable as possible then just wait a little while and 13.1 should be out (this from reading ChangeLog.txt, 13.1 is close).

I just realized I didn't really address slackpkg. Slackpkg now comes with slackware. It isn't an apt, nor does it mean to be, but it works well for keeping slackware up to date.

When it detects that the kernel has been changed it offers to run lilo for you. DO NOT BE FOOLED! For me, anyway, it hasn't made any changes to lilo, it just offers to run it for you. Either go fix lilo.conf and then switch back and let slackpkg run lilo for you, or just say 'no' and fix lilo.conf and re-run lilo yourself, later.

If this is your first slackware, then be aware that new configuration files from updated packages are typically named with a .new extension. So, part of the upgrade is looking for the .new files and merging the changes intelligently into your current files. Sometimes you can just replace the old file with the new one, but not always. Slackpkg offers K)eep, O)verride, etc. options to help with this but all editing is still your responsibility.

For those performing an initial or "clean" install, here's a tip that I got from Eric Hameleers:

At the end of the install process, but before you attempt to run "mkinitrd", run That way mkinitrd will find the kernel modules in the correct location. It's actually documented in README_LVM.TXT, but you should (IMO) run "chroot /mnt" prior to running "mkinitrd" after an initial install even if you aren't using LVM.

Slackware current seems to cope with an 82865G Integrated Graphics Controller, which couldn't be said of 13.0.

I ended up doing a PXE boot install, using an ftp site in America for the package files. That is most certainly the way forward for a clean install, if you have another computer around to be the tftp server.

Perhaps you can explain this a bit further. I only ask because as I read this it would suggest that your system would have to be installed to /mnt as opposed to /

I suspect that you have misunderstood the reasoning for Alien Bob's comment as it seems somewhat counter-intuitive.

samac