Another Linux Desktop Update (and Slackware 10.2)

The Linux desktop machine is not only still going well, but getting better all the time. In fact, Windows has been deleted from my main computer, the result I'd been hoping for and something I'd been wanting to do for years. As far as I'm concerned, Windows in all it's variations is now just another console, good for games, not much use for anything else.

I recently upgraded to Slackware 10.2 on my main computer. Generally my computer is usually near the most updated you can get without having Beta or Alpha or CVS-build software on a machine. When it comes to upgrades, I upgrade to the next version of software depending on:

1) Whether I can run it in tandem with the older version - While this is possible with most things (e.g. Opera, PuTTY, TightVNC), it's not always possible with major upgrades. I want to KNOW that I can run the new version but that if there is a single regression I can still use the version I was using before.

2) Whether I can always revert to the older version if I want - This is where a package management system beats the built-in Windows features hands down. Not only will Swaret find, download, install and check dependencies of any software I install using it, it will also make a backup of the previous version. A simple removepkg/installpkg will get me right back to where I wanted, at worst having to replace any tailored config files from a personal backup. Most Linux distributions have such facilities, RPM, DEB, etc.

3) Other people's experiences of upgrading to that software - Lots of confirmed reports found on Google, relevant forums etc. of no major problems is the best thing, lack of any reports of major problems is next best. The less information available, the less I trust the upgrade.

4) Reputation of and previous experience installing that software - a program which has never had an install problem, upgrades itself neatly and compactly, is able to import all of its old settings etc. is one I'm more likely to upgrade as soon as I can.

5) The severity of the upgrade - how important an upgrade it is will determine how quickly I will be upgrading to it. Serious security updates for critical flaws and serious bug fixes for dangerous bugs will be more likely to be installed that something that corrects a spelling mistake in a filename.

6) The enormity of the upgrade - minor upgrades are more likely to occur, major upgrades may be postponed until I can test them out fully.

Given the above, a Slackware 10.1 -> Slackware 10.2 upgrade snags on 4,5 and 6. Numbers 1 and 2 are dependent on how carefully I think through the upgrade, and information for 3 wasn't available, although many people have been running the slackware-current version between the 10.1 and 10.2 release (I hereby thank all the willing testers for ensuring my machine will be relatively safe by the time 10.2 comes out).

Security wasn't a major problem - I was properly firewalled, my common desktop software (Opera etc.) was always at the latest stable version and nothing exposed to the internet was vulnerable. There were a few upgrades I was looking forward to, most notably a Ghostscript upgrade that made my printer (a Samsung ML-4500... possibly the only laser printer I've ever seen that you can open the specially-designed toner cartridge and just pour in certain toner without having to re-buy the entire cartridge) work much better under CUPS.

KDE upgrades were also on my agenda but not something I was happy attempting on my primary desktop machine by myself. This fixed things like my icons jitting about the place between (fairly infrequent) reboots, konqueror crashing while navigating the filesystem and numerous other little niggles.

It turned out in the end that I managed to clear out my old 10Gb Windows partition (so there really is no going back now!), after throwing a few lifebelts to things like documents, INI files and other stuff that might come in handy someday. With Slackware, unlike Windows, I literally formatted the drive as ext3 and copied the old Slackware install over using cp -a -x to the blank drive. This copied all the files, links, etc. over without modifying them.

A small oversight discovered later was that the -x (stay on a single filesystem) for some reason excluded /dev but even *that* couldn't stop Linux trying it's best to boot (although a lot of drivers complained). That went into the rather short list of "Should I ever have to do this again, remember to"'s.

Once the filesystem was copied across, I booted from a boot disk making sure that the new partition was the linux root. I played with the lilo config to set it up (keeping some older entries to boot back into the original config should I ever need to), edited fstab and then reinstalled lilo.

[[ Side note: My favourite thing about Linux in general is that any kernel can boot any partition on any computer. I needn't have bothered with this backwards compatibility entries in lilo, I could have just booted from any Slackware boot CD that I had laying around and tell it which partition to use as root and I can fix/run anything to get it back up and working.]]

Then I booted into this identical copy of my root and only once I was in and everything was working as if it was my old drive did I follow through the Slackware 10.1 -> 10.2 UPGRADE.TXT instructions.

The upgrade went very smoothly and once the package upgrades were complete, it was merely a matter of setting up lilo again to boot from the 10.2 2.6.13 generic kernel that had been installed (making my own initrd on the way) and then rebooting.

[[side note: Although I think that initrd are a marvellous idea (a small mid-boot ramdisk environment to bung in any strange drivers that may be needed at boot time, e.g. USB/Firewire Mass Storage, SCSI etc.) they can be a pain in the backside when you just want to add a new line to lilo with a slightly different config. That usually means rebuilding the initrd with different root parameters etc. which soon can become a file-management nightmare, having to keep kernels, configs and initrds for every different combination. Hell... it works and you can tweak it to do some complicated stuff, so I'll suffer it.]]

After that, it was simply a matter of seeing what needed recompiling to fit in with the numerous upgrades that were in 10.2 (kernel, KDE, QT, libraries etc.). I didn't even bother to check whether the proprietry NVidia drivers I use (the only low-level non-source-code thing I have installed on this machine) would need recompiling as I was certain they would. This went without a hitch and then I was able to boot into X-Windows on this new system and "see what else had broke".

That turned out to be the driver for my never-used wireless card (which is used for purely experimental purposes as I don't generally trust wireless in any way shape or form, ever since I demonstrated to myself just how easy it is to crack WEP and really interfere with most wireless networks whatever the encryption... the only access allowed over the wireless interface is a public-key authenticated SSH). That caused me some minor problems as it was complaining about the module config of the kernel (a missing file normally attributed to having kernel source lying around which didn't actually compile the kernel in question). This turned out to be a bit of a false alarm as the module would load normally anyway and worked perfectly.

Other than minor issues and a bit of user stupidity, there were no problems. Strange, for an upgrade that's the equivalent of going from Windows 95 to 98, or NT4 to 2000, that there was so little upheaval and virtually zero compatibility problems. And yet, my primary partition was never in any danger and with a small boot from the CD and a tiny LILO tweak, I'd have been back as if I'd never touched the machine.

I have now also tried Knoppix 4.0 on my laptop, similarly impressed that it needs absolutely no prior knowledge of what system it's going to run on. I'm amazed at just how much of the stuff that I have bought or been given "just works" in Linux, at worst requiring me to hunt down a small GPL driver from somewhere:

The QX3 microscope I found at a boot sale.
A cheapy PSX->PC USB controller adaptor (though games are not the focus on this machine, it was just out of interest).
A cheapy USB hard drive enclosure, again found at a boot sale.
My Intel NetportExpress (from eBay) connected so that myself and my girlfriend can stop fighting over who gets to use what printer.
My cheapy graphics tablet that was bought on a whim and never really used

Admittedly, some things I deliberately research to ensure they work on both operating systems; my wireless card, my USB key, my cheapy, ancient printer, my sound card (went through two or three old, donated and junked sound cards which, while they all worked under Linux, all showed performance problems. In the end, I just bought a cheapy SoundBlaster Live off eBay to save me having to use software mixing).

I always knew that Linux had problems with certain pieces of hardware, back from when I first heard about Linux when I was just a lad. Now I think that 99% of the problems are sorted out and most systems "just work". Heck, even most winmodems can be persuaded to work in Linux, even if they do need a binary driver. So far, the only thing I've found that remains resolutely incompatible with Linux is a small USB-IrDA adaptor that was never bought to work with Linux and, though it's detected as a serial port, doesn't actually support all the IR protocols that it would under Windows.

Addendum: And now I'm being asked to install Linux systems for an unattended kiosk-style system and a few small specialised workstations running the QX3's inside some of the schools.