I'm considering upgrading my 13.1 box to current. Is the upgrade usually smooth, or can I expect problems? Also, how stable is current?

It should be smooth, you shouldn't encounter problems, it's pretty stable - as stable as some other distros' actual "stable". However, unless you are prepared to encounter the occasional problem and fix it yourself and pass the fixes upstream, I wouldn't recommend it. IOW, if you want to contribute to Slack by testing and improving -current, go for it. If you just want to have the latest packages and will be surprised and just complain if anything breaks, then you should stick to 13.1.

(Note, I'm not making any assumption that you match either description - just talking about principles. )

The most common "problem" I experience is when I need a new piece of software and the Slackbuild fails. This is usually easy enough to fix with a version bump and a small edit to foo.slackbuild. Sometimes that isn't the case. I'm not saying it happens everytime, but it isn't uncommon and at this particular stage in -current it's probably a little more likely due to recent updates. In general I consider it smooth and consider it my insignificant opportunity to contribute to the future of Slackware, mostly I do it just for fun.

My home server doesn't follow current and my laptop which I need to just work doesn't either, but my main workstation/desktop does.

I'm following -current on two boxes, and run 13.1 on my other two boxes. You shouldn't experience any difficulties upgrading to -current. Have fun.

One person had trouble with the X server.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...g-conf-841759/

Upgrading now. Keeping my fingers crossed; I'm about halfway through and I just noticed that Jack isn't working. Hope that goes away once the process is complete...

I have been following -Current since my first installation and nothing big has happened so far. Everything is solid and works normally like -Stable

Okay... I'm not one of the lucky ones, I guess. I finished the upgrade, rebooted, and it gets right up to the part where it's supposed to launch the KDE login screen, some messages fly past faster than I can follow, and it stops on a black screen with a flashing cursor at the top. Won't accept any kind of input, although along with the flashing cursor there's also a white rectangular cursor-type object that moves around with the mouse. Help! Is there any way I can get into a console and maybe figure out what's wrong?

Failed here to get usable X with "VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV44 [GeForce 6200 TurboCache(TM)] (rev a1)" which is a 256 MB PC-Express card (got X with a frozen mouse)

Strange is that xorgsetup failed (scrolled away).

Tried than the followings:
1.) without an xorg.conf
2.) with xorg.conf (edited by hand):
2/a.) "nv" driver
2/b.)"vesa" driver

Suspected that "nouveau" is causing the problems, blacklisted and tried 1., 2/a, 2/b with the same result.

(What I did not try was installing the proprietary driver.)

At last I downgraded do Slackware 12.2 where ewerything works for me, I am fine now (13.0 and 13.1 worked, but missed KDE-3.5 sooo much . Will wait with upgrading the system until the next hardware upgrade.

Have you tried ctrl-alt-f1? You can also append boot parameters to lilo I believe to boot into runlevel 3 rather than 4.

This is why I don't generally boot into runlevel4.

Yes, I have tried the hotkeys. So how do I mess with lilo during the boot process?

Do you have nvidia's driver installed? If so, you will have to boot to init 3 and uninstall it, then install it again. I've certainly done that before. Kernel upgraded, then forget about the nvidia driver.

Yeah, I thought of that... I'm sure the Nvidia driver is probably the issue. So how do I get into runlevel three during the boot?

press ESC, and then select your Linux entry and add 3 after the prompt (dont forget the space)
So, if your label is Linux, it will be like Linux 3 and then press ENTER

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Okay, fixed! Thanks. Current is running smoothly on my computer.