14.1 to 14.2 Upgrade Report

[Jimmy Johnson]

I had no problems, just did the normal slackpkg instructions after
changing the 14.1 to a 14.2 in mirrors.
slackpkg update gpg
slackpkg update
slackpkg install-new - I installed all new config files.
slackpkg upgrade-all - I installed all new config files.
slackpkg clean-system
At this point it was done, but I double did everything just to be sure.
Edit config files, kwrite is up and working and that's a good thing,
inittab, change 3 to 4; I have numlockx installed, so edit /kdm/Xsetup,
numlockx on; login screen was back to default, reset that with no
problem and setup audio settings, no problem with hdmi and 2 screens.
reboots over and over with no problem. This is both a amd and nvidia system.

I just love slackware and kde4.

[John McCue]

Post by Jimmy Johnson
I had no problems, just did the normal slackpkg instructions after
changing the 14.1 to a 14.2 in mirrors.

Nice, good pratice for 15 :)

[Jimmy Johnson]

Post by John McCue

Post by Jimmy Johnson
I had no problems, just did the normal slackpkg instructions after
changing the 14.1 to a 14.2 in mirrors.

Nice, good pratice for 15 :)

If you're talking kde5 and I think you are. KDE.org needs to fix
kdiskfree and kwikdisk, they still mount okay, but do not show status,
open file manager or update when mount unmount change. And yes, I know
there are other ways of doing things And if erick upgrades to the latest
plasma5, logout/reboot from the desktop will be broken and probably some
other things I don't know about. KDE4 works great using current and I
expect Pat to move to kde5 when it's ready.

[John McCue]

Post by Jimmy Johnson

Post by John McCue

Post by Jimmy Johnson
I had no problems, just did the normal slackpkg instructions after
changing the 14.1 to a 14.2 in mirrors.

Nice, good pratice for 15 :)

If you're talking kde5 and I think you are. KDE.org needs to fix

[snip]

No, by 15 I meant the next release if Slackware.
That upgrade will be a bear.

[Jimmy Johnson]

Post by John McCue

Post by Jimmy Johnson

Post by John McCue

Post by Jimmy Johnson
I had no problems, just did the normal slackpkg instructions after
changing the 14.1 to a 14.2 in mirrors.

Nice, good pratice for 15 :)

If you're talking kde5 and I think you are. KDE.org needs to fix

[snip]
No, by 15 I meant the next release if Slackware.
That upgrade will be a bear.

Personally I'm okay with ktown kde5 being a separate release and kde4
continuing on, just like kde3 is still going else where, only this is
better. Ktown is using beta software, kde5.8 was the last stable and
even it has bugs. Ktown kde5 is also the best there is in kde5, thanks
to Pat, Eric and all you Slackers. About eric's ktown kde5, it seems to
be a little overly fond of google and I don't like google as much as it
does.

[Aragorn]

Post by Jimmy Johnson
Personally I'm okay with ktown kde5 being a separate release and kde4
continuing on, just like kde3 is still going else where, only this is
better.

Actually, no, you are referring to TDE (Trinity Desktop Environment).
It is a continuation of the code that made the KDE 3 desktop, but it is
not being developed by KDE. It's as independent a project from KDE as
LibreOffice is different from OpenOffice.

Post by Jimmy Johnson
Ktown is using beta software, kde5.8 was the last stable and
even it has bugs.

I can't speak for Slackware, but KDE Plasma is currently at 5.19.2
already upstream, with 5.18 being a (very) stable long-term-support
release, of which the current release number stands at 5.18.5. The
underlying KDE Frameworks already stands at 5.70.x nowadays, and on my
Manjaro system here, it's running on top of Qt 5.15.

Plasma 5.8 is quite archaic already, and a lot has changed in
Plasma since the release of 5.8, insomuch that certain third-party
add-ons (like widgets and themes) aren't even compatible anymore now.

[Dan C]

Post by John McCue

Post by Jimmy Johnson
I had no problems, just did the normal slackpkg instructions after
changing the 14.1 to a 14.2 in mirrors.

Nice, good pratice for 15 :)

Not sure that's ever going to happen. :(

[John McCue]

Post by Dan C

Post by John McCue

Post by Jimmy Johnson
I had no problems, just did the normal slackpkg instructions after
changing the 14.1 to a 14.2 in mirrors.

Nice, good pratice for 15 :)

Not sure that's ever going to happen. :(

No kidding, I am almost wondering the same. I was
hoping for July, but that does not look good. But I
think (speculating) the biggest issue may be figuring
out how to install via USB since it seems no newer
laptops come with cdrom drives.

[Jim Diamond]

Post by John McCue

Post by Dan C

Post by John McCue

Post by Jimmy Johnson
I had no problems, just did the normal slackpkg instructions after
changing the 14.1 to a 14.2 in mirrors.

Nice, good pratice for 15 :)

Not sure that's ever going to happen. :(

No kidding, I am almost wondering the same. I was
hoping for July, but that does not look good. But I
think (speculating) the biggest issue may be figuring
out how to install via USB since it seems no newer
laptops come with cdrom drives.

.../slackware64-current/isolinux/README.TXT tells how to create a
bootable USB stick. It's easy-peasy, I haven't burned a CD or DVD in
a long, long time. (Partially because my optical drives seem to die
of boredom.)

Cheers.
Jim

[Henrik Carlqvist]

Post by Jim Diamond

But I think (speculating) the biggest issue may be figuring out how to
install via USB since it seems no newer laptops come with cdrom drives.

.../slackware64-current/isolinux/README.TXT tells how to create a
bootable USB stick. It's easy-peasy, I haven't burned a CD or DVD in a
long, long time. (Partially because my optical drives seem to die of
boredom.)

For laptops, rack servers and other machines missing DVD drives it is
also possible to connect a USB DVD-R(W) drive to boot from. I use those
all the time as I have a mix of newer machines without built in CD/DVD
and older machines unable to boot from USB. With a USB CD- or DVD- reader
I am able to use the same installation media for oll machines.

regards Henrik

[John McCue]

[snip]

Post by Jim Diamond

Post by John McCue
hoping for July, but that does not look good. But I
think (speculating) the biggest issue may be figuring
out how to install via USB since it seems no newer
laptops come with cdrom drives.

.../slackware64-current/isolinux/README.TXT tells how to create a
bootable USB stick. It's easy-peasy, I haven't burned a CD or DVD in
a long, long time. (Partially because my optical drives seem to die
of boredom.)
Cheers.

I heard someone put a method together, but I did
not know it became official. Good to know since
I replaced my cdrom with a SDD.

John

[Chris Vine]

On Sat, 27 Jun 2020 17:58:44 -0000 (UTC)

Post by John McCue
[snip]

Post by Jim Diamond

Post by John McCue
hoping for July, but that does not look good. But I
think (speculating) the biggest issue may be figuring
out how to install via USB since it seems no newer
laptops come with cdrom drives.

.../slackware64-current/isolinux/README.TXT tells how to create a
bootable USB stick. It's easy-peasy, I haven't burned a CD or DVD in
a long, long time. (Partially because my optical drives seem to die
of boredom.)
Cheers.

I heard someone put a method together, but I did
not know it became official. Good to know since
I replaced my cdrom with a SDD.

The relevant README for making bootable USB sticks is at
slackware64-current/usb-and-pxe-installers/README_USB.TXT.

It is worth noting that the slackware distribution is bootable of itself
under EFI because it comes with a pre-prepared slackware64-current/EFI/BOOT
directory with a bootx64.efi EFI binary in it, which is a grub image.
If you have a USB stick with a single VFAT partition on it (which most
come pre-prepared with), you can use fdisk to identify that partition as
an EFI system partition and then copy the whole of the slackware
distribution onto it. It should then be bootable on any EFI system.
(The advantage of using usbboot.img is that it is also bootable by
non-EFI systems; the advantage of doing it in the way mentioned above is
that it is non-destructive.)

[Jim Diamond]

Post by Chris Vine
On Sat, 27 Jun 2020 17:58:44 -0000 (UTC)

Post by John McCue
[snip]

Post by Jim Diamond

Post by John McCue
hoping for July, but that does not look good. But I
think (speculating) the biggest issue may be figuring
out how to install via USB since it seems no newer
laptops come with cdrom drives.

.../slackware64-current/isolinux/README.TXT tells how to create a
bootable USB stick. It's easy-peasy, I haven't burned a CD or DVD in
a long, long time. (Partially because my optical drives seem to die
of boredom.)
Cheers.

I heard someone put a method together, but I did
not know it became official. Good to know since
I replaced my cdrom with a SDD.

The relevant README for making bootable USB sticks is at
slackware64-current/usb-and-pxe-installers/README_USB.TXT.

Chris: If you check the doc in isolinux, you will see if tells you how
to make a bootable USB stick. So I think you want to say "A README
for making ...".

John: the directions in isolinux/README.TXT tell you how to make a
bootable USB stick with all the packages. In usb-and-pxe-installers
there is a very small bootable image, but using it requires you to
have the installation packages on a partition of the computer onto
which you are installing, or available via the network, or ...

I've never found any reason to use the usb-and-pxe-installers version,
but each to his own.

Jim

[Javier]

Post by Jim Diamond

Post by Chris Vine
The relevant README for making bootable USB sticks is at
slackware64-current/usb-and-pxe-installers/README_USB.TXT.

Chris: If you check the doc in isolinux, you will see if tells you how
to make a bootable USB stick. So I think you want to say "A README
for making ...".
John: the directions in isolinux/README.TXT tell you how to make a
bootable USB stick with all the packages. In usb-and-pxe-installers
there is a very small bootable image, but using it requires you to
have the installation packages on a partition of the computer onto
which you are installing, or available via the network, or ...
I've never found any reason to use the usb-and-pxe-installers version,
but each to his own.

What I miss is a HOWTO for installing slackware from other linux distro.
These days I install everything from Linux Rescue CD. I don't bother writing
the distro images to USB or CD anymore.

For Slackware I use:

sudo installpkg --root /tmp/ROOT /tmp/ROOT/slackware/{a,ap,d,e,f,k,l,n,t,tcl,x,xap}/*.t?z

But there is a warning message:

WARNING: pkgtools are unstable with tar > 1.13.
You should provide a "tar-1.13" in your $PATH.

The Slackware setup program is in /usr/lib/setup, but that is not evident for newcomers.

[Henrik Carlqvist]

Post by Javier
What I miss is a HOWTO for installing slackware from other linux distro.

I think that most OS vendors has the idea that you should boot the
installation media to install their OS. That said, it is possible to
install one OS from within another OS, but you need to know what you are
doing and you will need some knowledge of both the OS you are installing
from and the OS you are going to install.

Post by Javier
These days I install everything from Linux Rescue CD. I don't bother
writing the distro images to USB or CD anymore.

I still prefer to create my own custom installation CDs and DVDs, those
can also be used as simple rescue CDs. My main reason to customize my
installation media is to add my preferred answers to all questions asked
during installation.

Post by Javier
sudo installpkg --root /tmp/ROOT
/tmp/ROOT/slackware/{a,ap,d,e,f,k,l,n,t,tcl,x,xap}/*.t?z
WARNING: pkgtools are unstable with tar > 1.13.
You should provide a "tar-1.13" in your $PATH.

That warning message is rather self explanitory. If you look at a
Slackware system you will see something like:

bash-4.3$ ls -al /bin/tar*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 388024 May 20 2016 /bin/tar
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 132920 May 20 2016 /bin/tar-1.13
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 3 Feb 17 2018 /bin/tar-1.29 -> tar

...and the reason that also tar-1.13 is installed is of course to get
working package management tools. That version of tar is probably also
installed on the installation media.

Post by Javier
The Slackware setup program is in /usr/lib/setup, but that is not evident for newcomers.

"Installing Slackware" is more than just installing a bunch of packages.
You will need to partition your disk and you will need to configure some
kind of boot loader. By default lilo is configured at the end of the
installation just like many other things are configured by scripts in
/var/log/setup.

regards Henrik

[Javier]

Post by Henrik Carlqvist

Post by Javier
What I miss is a HOWTO for installing slackware from other linux distro.

I think that most OS vendors has the idea that you should boot the
installation media to install their OS. That said, it is possible to
install one OS from within another OS, but you need to know what you are
doing and you will need some knowledge of both the OS you are installing
from and the OS you are going to install.

Post by Javier
These days I install everything from Linux Rescue CD. I don't bother
writing the distro images to USB or CD anymore.

I still prefer to create my own custom installation CDs and DVDs, those
can also be used as simple rescue CDs. My main reason to customize my
installation media is to add my preferred answers to all questions asked
during installation.

Probably for Slackware it makes sense to do that as the installer scripts
remain the same version after version. Other distros are moving targets.

Post by Henrik Carlqvist

Post by Javier
WARNING: pkgtools are unstable with tar > 1.13.
You should provide a "tar-1.13" in your $PATH.

That warning message is rather self explanitory. If you look at a
bash-4.3$ ls -al /bin/tar*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 388024 May 20 2016 /bin/tar
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 132920 May 20 2016 /bin/tar-1.13
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 3 Feb 17 2018 /bin/tar-1.29 -> tar
...and the reason that also tar-1.13 is installed is of course to get
working package management tools. That version of tar is probably also
installed on the installation media.

Possibly the reason for that are bugs or lack of backwards
compatibility in option behavior in newer versions of GNU tar.

BTW, past week there was a discussion in comp.unix.shell about GNU tar bugs.
See this message:

lynx 'nntp://news.aioe.org/rd72vh$kbs$***@news2.open-news-network.org'

Anyway, it's not that bad. I could get Slackware installed with the
modern tar in System Rescue CD.

Post by Henrik Carlqvist

Post by Javier
The Slackware setup program is in /usr/lib/setup, but that is not evident for newcomers.

"Installing Slackware" is more than just installing a bunch of packages.
You will need to partition your disk and you will need to configure some
kind of boot loader. By default lilo is configured at the end of the
installation just like many other things are configured by scripts in
/var/log/setup.

I can partition the disk and configure most other things like timezone,
keymap, etc. with a distro agnostic script.

For the init system it's not possible to do something distro
agnostic. Systemd is horrible for that as it is a moving target.
In the case of slackware it's just a matter of making a few files
in /etc/rc.d/.

[Dan C]

Post by Dan C

Post by John McCue

Post by Jimmy Johnson
I had no problems, just did the normal slackpkg instructions after
changing the 14.1 to a 14.2 in mirrors.

Nice, good pratice for 15 :)

Not sure that's ever going to happen. :(

No kidding, I am almost wondering the same. I was hoping for July, but
that does not look good. But I think (speculating) the biggest issue
may be figuring out how to install via USB since it seems no newer
laptops come with cdrom drives.

You can buy a cheap CD/DVD external drive with USB connection and it will
work fine for booting from. I do it all the time.