This will upgrade the default Slackware 12.2 install on Linode to Slackware 13. A fresh install is assumed. The entire process should take about 15 minutes or so.

Linode installs a limited set of packages. Here is a list of packages installed according to /var/log/packages, with links to the updated version. This can be put into a text file for wget to use. This mirror worked well.

http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/aaa_base-13.0-i486-2.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/aaa_elflibs-13.0-i486-2.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/aaa_terminfo-5.7-noarch-1.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/acl-2.2.47_1-i486-1.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/attr-2.4.43_1-i486-1.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/bash-3.1.017-i486-2.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/bin-11.1-i486-1.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/bzip2-1.0.5-i486-1.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/coreutils-7.4-i486-1.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/n/curl-7.19.6-i486-1.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/cxxlibs-6.0.10-i486-1.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/dcron-2.3.3-i486-6.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/devs-2.3.1-noarch-25.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/n/dhcpcd-3.2.3-i486-1.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/dialog-1.1_20080819-i486-2.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/e2fsprogs-1.41.8-i486-1.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/elvis-2.2_0-i486-2.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/etc-13.0-i486-2.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/gawk-3.1.6-i486-1.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/gettext-0.17-i486-2.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/l/glibc-2.9-i486-3.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/l/glibc-i18n-2.9-i486-3.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/glibc-solibs-2.9-i486-3.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/glibc-zoneinfo-2.9-noarch-3.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/grep-2.5.4-i486-1.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/gzip-1.3.12-i486-1.tgz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/n/iputils-s20070202-i486-2.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/kbd-1.15-i486-3.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/less-418-i486-2.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/l/libidn-1.5-i486-1.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/module-init-tools-3.6-i486-2.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/l/ncurses-5.7-i486-1.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/n/net-tools-1.60-i486-2.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/n/network-scripts-13.0-noarch-2.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/n/openssh-5.2p1-i486-1.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/n/openssl-0.9.8k-i486-2.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/openssl-solibs-0.9.8k-i486-2.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/patch-2.5.4-i486-1.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/l/pcre-7.7-i486-1.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/pkgtools-13.0-noarch-3.tgz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/procps-3.2.7-i486-2.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/l/readline-5.2-i486-4.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/sed-4.1.5-i486-1.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/shadow-4.0.3-i486-18.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/sharutils-4.7-i486-1.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/sysvinit-2.86-i486-6.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/sysvinit-functions-8.53-i486-2.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/sysvinit-scripts-1.2-noarch-30.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/tar-1.22-i486-2.tgz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/time-1.7-i486-1.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/utempter-1.1.4-i486-1.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/util-linux-ng-2.14.2-i486-1.txz
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/n/wget-1.11.4-i486-1.txz

I created a folder called "13update" in my home directory, and put the above in a text file called "packages.txt"

Run the command:

wget -i packages.txt

When it's done, it should have downloaded 53 files, 39M.

You will also need these packages which are not installed on the default linode setup:

wget http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/findutils-4.4.2-i486-1.txz 
wget http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/l/libcap-2.16-i486-2.txz
wget http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/xz-4.999.8beta-i486-1.tgz 
wget http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/a/file-5.03-i486-1.txz
wget http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-13.0/slackware/n/cyrus-sasl-2.1.23-i486-1.txz

findutils is required by upgradepkg, libcap is needed for the updated "ls" command, xz is needed for the new compression used in packages, cyrus-sasl is needed by curl.


The following steps install the updated package management tools as well as findutils to avoid errors with upgradepkg. (errors are not fatal but spurious files will not be deleted without this)

Run these commands in order, as root:

installpkg xz-4.999.8beta-i486-1.tgz
xz -d findutils-4.4.2-i486-1.txz
gzip findutils-4.4.2-i486-1.tar
mv findutils-4.4.2-i486-1.tar.gz findutils-4.4.2-i486-1.tgz
installpkg findutils*.tgz
upgradepkg pkgtools*.tgz
upgradepkg tar*.tgz
installpkg file*.txz
installpkg libcap*.txz

Use the following to go into single user mode. (This is recommended, but I actually tried this once in normal mode and didn't encounter any problems. )

telinit 1

log into your Lish as root, cd to the packages directory, and execute the following command:

upgradepkg *.txz

Note that some of these are already installed. It's fine, the package manager will ignore them automatically.


reboot

You will also notice in the /etc directory and some subdirectories, there are files with the .new extension, indicating they are updated. You may want to look through the changes and decide what you want to migrate. I recommend using the new DIR_COLORS and securetty, but the rest of the .new files look safe to ignore and delete.

The above should take care of most dependencies.

I found only one program, memusagestat that requires a bunch of x11 dependencies, but I've never used that command.

Other recommended packages:

man-1.6f-i486-2.txz
man-pages-3.22-noarch-2.txz
groff-1.20.1-i486-1.txz (used by man)

sysklogd-1.4.1-i486-10.txz
logrotate-3.7.4-i486-1.txz

which-2.20-i486-1.txz
nano-2.0.9-i486-1.txz

libcap is not required by ls. Color output works just fine.

A lot of this can be automated with slackpkg. You just have to install the package-handling utilities (which are called from slackpkg) and whatever packages they require manually, since the package format changed with Slack 13, but slackpkg can automate the rest.

A list of packages I found to be necessary/good to have:

./a:
aaa_base-13.0-i486-2.txz
aaa_elflibs-13.0-i486-2.txz
aaa_terminfo-5.7-noarch-1.txz
acl-2.2.47_1-i486-1.txz
attr-2.4.43_1-i486-1.txz
bash-3.1.017-i486-2.txz
bin-11.1-i486-1.txz
bzip2-1.0.5-i486-1.txz
coreutils-7.4-i486-1.txz
cryptsetup-1.0.7-i486-1.txz
cxxlibs-6.0.10-i486-1.txz
dcron-2.3.3-i486-6.txz
devs-2.3.1-noarch-25.txz
dialog-1.1_20080819-i486-2.txz
e2fsprogs-1.41.8-i486-1.txz
etc-13.0-i486-2.txz
file-5.03-i486-1.txz
findutils-4.4.2-i486-1.txz
gawk-3.1.6-i486-1.txz
gettext-0.17-i486-2.txz
glibc-solibs-2.9-i486-3.txz
glibc-zoneinfo-2.9-noarch-3.txz
grep-2.5.4-i486-1.txz
gzip-1.3.12-i486-1.tgz
kbd-1.15-i486-3.txz
less-418-i486-2.txz
lilo-22.8-i486-14.txz
logrotate-3.7.4-i486-1.txz
module-init-tools-3.6-i486-2.txz
openssl-solibs-0.9.8k-i486-2.txz
patch-2.5.4-i486-1.txz
pkgtools-13.0-noarch-3.tgz
procps-3.2.7-i486-2.txz
sed-4.1.5-i486-1.txz
shadow-4.0.3-i486-18.txz
sharutils-4.7-i486-1.txz
sysvinit-2.86-i486-6.txz
sysvinit-functions-8.53-i486-2.txz
sysvinit-scripts-1.2-noarch-30.txz
tar-1.22-i486-2.tgz
time-1.7-i486-1.txz
udev-141-i486-3.txz
utempter-1.1.4-i486-1.txz
util-linux-ng-2.14.2-i486-1.txz
which-2.20-i486-1.txz
xz-4.999.8beta-i486-1.tgz

./ap:
diffutils-2.8.1-i486-3.txz
slackpkg-2.80.2-noarch-3.tgz
vim-7.2.245-i486-1.txz

./l:
glibc-2.9-i486-3.txz
glibc-i18n-2.9-i486-3.txz
libidn-1.5-i486-1.txz
ncurses-5.7-i486-1.txz
pcre-7.7-i486-1.txz
readline-5.2-i486-4.txz

./n:
curl-7.19.6-i486-1.txz
dhcpcd-3.2.3-i486-1.txz
gnupg-1.4.9-i486-1.txz
iproute2-2.6.29_1-i486-2.txz
iptables-1.4.3.2-i486-1.txz
iputils-s20070202-i486-2.txz
net-tools-1.60-i486-2.txz
network-scripts-13.0-noarch-2.txz
openssh-5.2p1-i486-1.txz
openssl-0.9.8k-i486-2.txz
wget-1.11.4-i486-1.txz

I believe we talked about dropping some of them for the official image, though I can't go back to look at my logs right now. This will give a fully functional Slackware 13.0 install, anyway.