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Slack is a distro everybody should try at some point in their lives. Honestly, there's really no other distribution quite like it that offers the simplicity, stability, and speed of good 'ol Slack. I wait with baited breath, how about everyone else? I know Linc, and Allan can't wait!

Run down of what's on track:

2.4.33/2.6.17 kernel
KDE 3.5.4
Xfce 4.2.3.2
Firefox 1.5.0.6
X.org 6.9

Yep! I use an rsync script that tracks -current and builds a DVD ISO automatically, so I am testing out RC3 now. Nice.

Wally Balljacker wrote:I wait with baited breath, how about everyone else? I know Linc, and Allan can't wait!

Damn straight!

Can't wait to check out the latest Slack. I've been putting Arch through its paces lately and I really like it. But, when Slack 11 is released, I'm going to have to put Arch on hold for a while....

Slackware is great. I liked using it when I did.

It's just not something I can recommend to the MS-Zombies and novice PC users I'm supporting. But that doesn't mean I wish to see it change. Slackware is great for what Slackware is supposed to be.

I just couldn't wait, and went ahead and installed the RC3, which is basically -current, as I understand it. Is there a way I can 'freeze' it, once 11.0 is released? I'd rather not continue with -current, since I also have Debian unstable on here, which can be challenging enough by itself.

The current branch becomes 11.0 when Patrick releases 11.0, so if you were to keep tracking -current until 11.0 release, then you'd be running 11.0. He just moves the whole current tree into 11.0 and starts a new -current for the next development.

You sound as if there is a package manager like apt in Slackware by default. And before anyone hounds me about this I know there is slapt-get and swaret and another one. I don't think any of those are part of the official distro, but maybe on the extras cd.

Anyway, there is a file in /etc/slackware-version that you can look into. If you are using swaret or slapt-get then change (in the config file) the version listing to what you want.

Thanks for the info guys. I thought about using Slapt-get, or Swaret again, but I think I'm going to try and stick with the standard Slackware package system, with KDE, and the stock 2.4 kernel, just to get the full experience. It's running real nice so far.

If you have RC3 installed, then once 11.0 is released, you can just manually download the install the updated packages that have been released since RC3 and 11.0 and install them and you will then be running 11.0. And you can then stop there. No need to keep installing packages from current after 11.0 is released if you don't want to.

You can also install "slackpkg" from the /extras directory which will do it for you (that's what I use). It does not resolve dependencies -- it's just an easy way to download and install packages from either the stable or current trees, nothing more and nothing less. And since slackpkg is the only third-party tool like it that is included with Slackware, it more or less has PV's "unofficial blessing". Probably because it just downloads and installs, wihtout trying to figure out dependencies.

Chess wrote:If you have RC3 installed, then once 11.0 is released, you can just manually download the install the updated packages that have been released since RC3 and 11.0 and install them and you will then be running 11.0. And you can then stop there. No need to keep installing packages from current after 11.0 is released if you don't want to.

You can also install "slackpkg" from the /extras directory which will do it for you (that's what I use). It does not resolve dependencies -- it's just an easy way to download and install packages from either the stable or current trees, nothing more and nothing less. And since slackpkg is the only third-party tool like it that is included with Slackware, it more or less has PV's "unofficial blessing". Probably because it just downloads and installs, wihtout trying to figure out dependencies.

I'm giving "slackpkg" a whirl now. Seems to be real fast and simple, but it looks like most of the 11.0 mirrors in the config file haven't been updated yet, so I went ahead with -current for now.

Wally Balljacker wrote:it looks like most of the 11.0 mirrors in the config file haven't been updated yet, so I went ahead with -current for now.

That's because -stable is still set to 10.2. There is no v.11 tree yet, so yep, just stick with -current until 11.0 comes out. Once it does, you can change your slackpkg conf to point to the 11.0 tree and you'll just be tracking the stable 11.0 tree from there on out.

One more thing: you can also try using Eric Hameleer's great slackware rsync script to create your own mirror of Slackware -stable or -current (this is what I use as well to create my own CD or DVD). That way, you can follow the changelog and manually upgrade the RC3>11.0 packages after 11.0 is final.

Here is Eric's site (he is a long time Slack user and Pat V. has given him web space on slackware.com)

http://www.slackware.com/~alien/

Look in "useful scripts" and it's called "mirror-slackware-current.sh."

Hey Chess, I was looking into slacktrack, and checkinstall, for tracking programs compiled from source. Do you use either one of these? I've just been compiling from source, and installing the old fashion way. Would using one of these tools be a better idea?

Wally Balljacker wrote:Would using one of these tools be a better idea?

Checkinstall is nice because it's generally easier to remove the package in one shot instead of hunting around for everything. I've used it in Slackware, Debian and Suse.

Wally Balljacker wrote:Hey Chess, I was looking into slacktrack, and checkinstall, for tracking programs compiled from source. Do you use either one of these? I've just been compiling from source, and installing the old fashion way. Would using one of these tools be a better idea?

I use checkinstall all the time and it works great. There are other, similar projects out there, like PkgBuild (used to be called src2pkg):

http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/dis ... -PkgBuild/

made by the maintainer of Amigo Linux, which apparently works well, although I have never tried it. There is a LQ thread about it here:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions ... p?t=462649

Checkinstall is all I need, though. It just makes it easy to remove packages later on.