LinuxQuestions.org - fresh install: current or 14.1?

- Slackware - Installation (https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-installation-40/)

- - fresh install: current or 14.1? (https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-installation-40/fresh-install-current-or-14-1-a-4175558064/)

fresh install: current or 14.1?

I've been running 14.1 on a older laptop which recently died on me. I now have a newer lenevo F500 that I can put another operating system on.

At this point, does it make sense to install slackware-current, or stay with 14.1? I've run current before and had minimal problems. I have a current iso ready to burn, but I would be interested in what the forum's wisdom is on this.

Thanks!

If you want the latest stuff go current but Slackbuilds are hit and miss right now for current.
If you need stuff from Slackbuilds and do not want to edit the builds then 14.1 is the way to go.
Current seems to be very stable as of the last huge update. Remember dealing with current you always need to do a slackpkg install-new

Unless you need newer hardware support or the latest versions of programs, it is always better to install the latest stable. While -current might be "stable" right now, it isn't guaranteed to be. Updates have been known to break other programs, especially with 3rd-party programs. If you do decide to run -current, you should know how to do basic troubleshooting in case your computer doesn't boot or a program doesn't start.

That being said, I just installed the latest version (as of 3 NOV) of -current on a new HTPC I built last night. It seemed to work flawlessly and I have already built kodi on it (haven't tested it yet since it finished after I went to bed). But I had to run -current due to the APU in my system not being fully supported on 14.1.

You can try to run current in a live media: http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/slac...dition-beta-2/

I was running current for a couple of months and then downgraded successfully to stable (not sure if this is a good practice though).
The only "problem" that i had while running current, was that i had to rebuild some sbo packages after an upgrade. Apart from this, i am not a huge fan of constant upgrades and that's why stable is fitting better to my needs.
Right now i am thinking of rearranging the partition scheme in my laptop, and that means that i am leaning forward to a fresh installation after 14.2 released.

My advice is to stay with stable for a few days, or a couple of weeks, and then, you can make your decision. As you can see here for example
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...lf-4175575197/

14.2 is not very far away. Then, you ll probably have to take another decision: stay to 14.1, upgrade to 14.2, upgrade to -current...

Hi,

Look at; http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/new-...dition-beta-7/

Quote:

In the meantime the upload of the new ISO images for Slackware Live Edition, release “0.7.0” to slackware.uk has completed.
As always, I encourage new readers to visit my previous articles on Slackware Live Edition for more background information.
What’s new in 0.7.0?

I could not spare as much time as for the previous betas (work comes first because it pays for food and shelter). So the new ISO images are primarily meant to be a showcase of both Slackware -current and the new Plasma 5 version. Still, there are a few things to mention.

The scope of the boot parameter “livemedia” has been extended. It will now also accept an ISO file (containing Slackware Live Edition of course) as parameter value, so that you can more easily test a freshly downloaded ISO without having to copy it to a USB stick or burn it to a DVD first. It’s use is quite versatile:
- “livemedia=/dev/sdX1:/path/to/live.iso” points to an ISO file on partition “/dev/sdX1″.
- “livemedia=DATA:/path/to/liveslak.iso” points to an ISO file on a filesystem with label “DATA”.
- “livemedia=”7550954e-3d40-4e46-ae91-d02dce1d52a4:/your/live.iso” points to an ISO file on a partition with a specific UUID.
A new boot parameter “nga” was added. It stands for “no glamor acceleration” and should be useful on hardware (including QEMU virtual hardware) where X.Org refuses to start with the error “EGL_MESA_drm_image required; (EE) modeset(0): glamor initialization failed“. It adds a file to /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/ to disable glamor 2D acceleration, something which used to be off by default and since X.Org 1.18 seems to be on by default.
The “setup2hd” hard disk installer was polished a little bit.
A wiki-fied version of the README.txt documentation was added to the Slackware Documentation Project. See http://docs.slackware.com/slackware:liveslak.
Documentation on how to customize the Live Edition for your own Slackware derivative was added. This is a work in progress – I still need to separate the syslinux and grub theming from the menu content.
Lots of small improvements and bug fixes were applied to liveslak. Check out the commit log if you are interested.

Download the ISO images

I have created ISO images for the SLACKWARE, XFCE, PLASMA5 and MATE flavours using the latest Slackware64-current packages available (Mon Mar 14 02:18:20 UTC 2016) as well as the latest Plasma 5 release which I yet have to upload to ‘ktown‘… you will see it first on Slackware Live Edition!
You can find the ISO images plus their MD5 checksum and GPG signature at any of the following locations – look in the “0.7.0” subdirectory for ISOs based on the liveslak-0.7.0 scripts. I made a symlink called “latest” which will always point to the latest set of ISO images:

Primary location: http://taper.alienbase.nl/mirrors/slackware-live/ (please do not download from here, use a mirror)
Darren’s mirror (fast!): http://slackware.uk/people/alien-slacklive/ (rsync://slackware.uk/people/alien-slacklive/)
Willy’s mirror: http://repo.ukdw.ac.id/slackware-live/
Ryan’s mirror: https://seattleslack.ryanpcmcquen.or...lackware-live/
Shasta’s mirror: http://ftp.slackware.pl/pub/slackware-live/ (rsync://ftp.slackware.pl/slackware-live/)
Tonus’s mirror: http://ftp.lip6.fr/pub/linux/distrib...ien-slacklive/

These mirror servers will sync up in the next 24 hours – slackware.uk is already uptodate.

Nice way to test drive Slackware64 -current.
Hope this helps.
Have fun & enjoy!
:hattip:

Quote:

Originally Posted by tfrei (Post 5445036)

tfrei --

Nice specs on your new Laptop !

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-...k.87585.0.html

Your Ivy Bridge-based machine should work well with 14.1 but 14.2 is all but out the door and someone else mentioned Alien's slackware-live:

http://bear.alienbase.nl/mirrors/slackware-live/latest/

I too recently upgraded from a 5-year-old Laptop on 13.37 to a newer Laptop.

In my case I upgraded to a Sky Lake based Machine also with with an NVidia GPU.

Due to the newer hardware, I went with current after first testing everything on Alien's slackware-live versions 4.x and 5.x to iron out drivers, etc.

I found out that my new Laptop's Killer 1535 Card (Qualcomm Atheros QCA6174 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter (rev 32) ) is not supported yet in the latest kernel-firmware ( I always check after a/kernel-firmware is updated ) but it's simple to replace the ath10k drivers as described in this Blog Entry:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/MSI_GT72-6QE

Current + Firewalker's ath10k Drivers + NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-361.28 have been rock-solid for me -- good thing too as this is my development machine for work <G>

I just now installed Pat's Friday and Saturday Slackware64 Updates ( including extra/wicd ) as well as a few new 32-bit multilib packages produced by Alien's massconvert.sh script.

Everything is running very well as expected ... current / 14.2 has been very good to me thanks to Pat and Eric and ALL the experts here on LQ.org !

If it was me ... I would try Alien's slackware-live usb ( http://bear.alienbase.nl/mirrors/sla...ve-current.iso ) and see how it goes ?

-- kjh

p.s. I was not able to build the slackware-live bootable usb on 13.37 due to older packages. I had to build the usb on a virtual slackware 14.1 machine YMMV ....