Slackware 12.1 has been released. That will be absolutely NO surprise to anyone who reads this, i suppose, as they probably knew before Michiel leaned over the back of the sofa and informed me it was now released (in the middle of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, no less. humph). However, this brings a new point in my education: i’m almost certainly going to be installing my own upgrades this time around. Ulp. [at least i'll have Michiel to hold my hand though. if only because if i did it on my own i would almost certainly a) screw something up b) have him screaming blue bloomin murder at me cos the mistake would be horrendous to fix.]
A new release of slackware seems to bring out the worst of the idiots in ##slackware. By this i mean those who seem to feel that a) installing slackware – or any open source software, i’m sure – entitles them to free support (rob0 has written a brilliant theory on it called S.W.E.E.T.) and who aren’t prepared to put any work (i.e. google!) in themselves on answering any of their myriad questions, b) that they can upgrade slackware without first reading the UPGRADE.TXT file (those on the last upgrade were caught out badly by this when they were specifically told not to use certain files to make their upgrades, that if they did, it would fubar their systems, and since they didn’t read the UPGRADE.TXT file, didn’t know about it. oh dear). There are other idiots as well, but that tends to be the two types that come in around the time of a new release of slackware, and i know it drives many of the long standing users/members of that channel insane. None of them mind helping those that are truly stuck, but when you are asked how to fix something simple for the umpteenth time that the person would have found themselves if they’d just bothered to google something.. well.. you can see the patience wearing thin.
Anyway. once my upgrades are through, with a certain amount of handholding, and i bet an awful lot of frustration from Michiel (and requests from me to use google – and no, I won’t be going into ##slackware to ask for advice!), i’ll come back and blog my experiences.. but it won’t be for a few days i think. maybe over the weekend, if its rainy. 
