Al. C wrote:
> I run 9.1 with KDE on desktop machines for a book publishing business.
>
> I sure wish there was an easy and TOTALLY foolproof (yeah, I'm a fool) way to
> go from one version to the next without doing a clean "from scratch" install.
> I will have to install and/or configure:
>
> phpMyAdmin
> Apache
> PHP
> Crossover Office (and install Word)
> Moneydance
> Open Office
> MySQL databases
> Home dir files (yeah, should have been on own partition)
> FireFox and bookmarks
> CUPS printers and settings
> Email and newsgroups accounts (Kmail/Knode)
> Email address book
> Jpilot data
> fstab entries for camera and hda
> Realplayer
>
> ... and probably stuff I have forgotten. I don't know how anyone can do this
> with every six-month release and still run the business (and it has to be
> done on other machine(s) as well.)
>
> I console myself saying that it wouldn't be any different with Windows.
> However I believe the Mac OS-X has a easier migration path. Not sure.
>
> I know there are so-called "methods" to upgrade with swaret and that for 10.0
> P.V. published a "how to" but from what I've read, neither of these are
> foolproof.. and are almost as time-consuming in getting the xxx.conf.new
> files changes into the "old" files.
>
> I'd sure like to run the "new stuff" but who (running a business) as time to
> upgrade? And with the fear of being slammed, is there a distro that DOES have
> a slam-dunk upgrade methodology? Debian with apt-get maybe? Just curious.
> Slackware has been very stable for us (compared to Mandrake) and we would not
> leave for light and transient reasons.
>
> Al C.
>
>
>
>

There is an upgrade howto on the root of slackware distribution. This
explain how to upgrade by hand without using any third party tool. I
think this is relatively fast and foolproof for the Slackware packages
itself but maybe not for third party tools you have installed. I suggest
you to do an entire backup of your drive (or your partitiuon) first so
that you can restore it in case something goes wrong.

Debian has an automatic upgrade method but you have still to decide if
you want replace the configuration files or not (I think they will ask
for each configuration file). This method will not be fullproof for
thing you have installed by hand (although you have nearly everything in
Debian). Be aware that you will have to upgrade to "testing" (the
"stable" distribution is very old: about 30 mounth; much older than your
slackware 9.2) which has no security update.

Red hat a version for the enterprise: Red Hat Entreprise. For this
distribution itself you have to pay for a support contract (one by
server). You can try howeber: http://www.centos.org/, it is the Red Hat
Entreprise recompiled where all Red Hat trademark have been removed.
They recompile also the security updates given by Red Hat (this is
perfectly legal: Red Hat is redistribuable if you remove the trademarks:
this is not obvious but they have done it).

Olive