upgrading slackware with swaret

[Adam Myrow]

On Mon, 4 Apr 2005, Sean McMahon wrote:

> So the slackware upgrade tool won't upgrade itself?  Another reason I guess why
> I like my favorate distro.

I've done upgrades with upgradepkg, which is part of Slackware.  The first 
CD usually has a file called "upgrade.txt" which explains the procedure, 
but it's a fairly manual procedure.  Slackware has always been closer to a 
"do it yourself" distribution than others.  I usually prefer to wipe out 
everything and do a clean install, then restore what I need from backups. 
I find that if I don't, I end up with a lot of crud I no longer need.  For 
example, older versions of Slackware didn't have GPG, so I had installed 
it myself.  It was easier for me to just start over rather than upgrade 
over the top of the existing system, then try and remove the old GPG files 
from my own build.  Similarly, Slackware now includes a program called 
pinepgp, which is a GPG/PGP filter to be added to Pine.  I had previously 
used one called Magicpgp, and when I did a fresh install of Slackware 
10.1, I dumped Magicpgp and switched to Pinepgp, which has a nice install 
script.  So, I don't mind doing things manually, because I got started 
with Slackware, and when they made Speakup part of their standard install, 
I decided to stick with them.  I suppose that if I'd started with Redhat 
or Fedora, and gotten used to it, I'd be annoyed at Slackware.