The old saying goes, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." To update or not is a question only you can answer. Things to consider: are your systems exposed to the internet? (ie, not behind a firewall) Even if you're behind a firewall and have services running (port forwarded through your firewall, say a webserver or mailserver), you should definitely update. ALWAYS keep publically available systems patched and running the latest versions of software. Get on the vendor's security mailing list. Slackware mailing lists are posted on slackware.com, I presume Mandrake has something similar. before updating, always make a backup. Generally, if you haven't changed much after a base install you can get by with just taring up /home and /etc, but I always recommend a full backup just in case. Make sure you can read your backups! When configuring your system, it's best to keep notes of what changes you've made so if anything breaks after an upgrade, you know what you did in the past. I like an online copy because it's easy to search. put this file on another system (not the one you're upgrading) so you can read it during an upgrade, worst case, <dread> print it out. do you have any special hardware that is/is not recoginzed today? generally upgrading makes things work that didn't before, but not always. are there any programs that you want to run today but can't? generally this is less of an issue from one release to the next but if you put off upgrading for a while you will eventually run into trouble compiling things or getting the latest and greatest programs to run on your old C libraries. Netscape is a fine example. Sooner or later they quit supporting a specific glibc version. Then it's time to update. I've done many Slackware updates. I have box that's been upgraded over and over from 8.0 through 9.1. The process is pretty easy although a bit manual. Just follow the instructions in the UPGRADE.TXT at the root of the cdrom (also available on the ftp mirrors) and you should be fine. I can't speak to Mandrake upgrades but I suspect being RPM based, they're pretty simple too. Charlie Obert wrote: > I started with Linux back in March of this year. Currently I have two > machines, one with Mandrake 9.1, one with Slackware 9.0, and both are > set up, talking to each other and running well. > > And now we have Mandrake 9.2 and Slackware 9.1 fresh out. This is the > first time I need to decide if I should upgrade either or both systems. > > I know in the M$ world there is hell (and Redmond) to pay if you push > off upgrading for too long. I don't know if it's the same in the Linux > world, or if I should just stay with systems that are working well and > doing what I need. > > Does anyone have any thoughts on the upgrading issue, either in general > or with Mandrake and/or Slackware in particular? -- scot _______________________________________________ TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota http://www.mn-linux.org tclug-list at mn-linux.org https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list