Thinking about coming back to Fedora

[jbordelon]

Hello everyone! When Fedora Core 1 was born, I was very angry. I had been a very happy Redhat user (except for Redhat 8!) and felt somewhat betrayed. Since then, I have had a love/hate relationship with Slackware. I have recently grown weary of the lack of growth and fear of change exhibited by Slackware. For example, the default kernel is still 2.4! That, IMHO, is insane. I think 2.6 has proven itself quite well.

Anyway, I can now see that my initial anger and resentment towards Redhat and Fedora were unfounded. The Fedora community has helped Fedora Core grow in leaps and bounds. With the announcement of Fedora Desktop 7, my interest was caught and I am considering trying out Fedora Core 6 and am looking forward to the next realease of Fedora.

I say all that to ask this question, is there a possibility that the "Upgrade" feature from FC6 to Fedora 7 will actually work? Or will I have to do a clean install once Fedora 7 comes out again. If that is the case, I may just wait until then to reload my main Desktop.

Thanks in advance,

--Jason

In that case I would wait. I know some people have no problems updating from one release to another but Murphy is a sly old dog

Wayne

[erroneus]

There's another reason I prefer to install new instead of upgrading...at least in a desktop environment. When you upgrade, the system does its best to keep your original/previous settings. When you install fresh, you get to see the newest and most interesting features enabled by default. So from a user-experience perspective, I definitely favor installing fresh. But I find that it's useful to share my methods with a little detail:

Step one: remove original hard drive
Step two: install new hard drive
Step three: install new OS (manual partition, no LVM! It helps with data recovery)
Step four: put old drive into external USB drive case
Step five: copy old data back over. (If previous OS install utilized LVM partitioning, you need to boot with the USB drive in place to make it simple, otherwise you have to do a little magic to gain access to your old data.)

You will then want to bring over your ,mozilla and other relevant/important data.

I find that, at the moment, LVM really gets in the way of data recovery from old drives. For a server environment, it's potentially useful but not in a desktop that constantly changes. (I wouldn't recommend Fedora for any server system anyway... changes are too frequent and when new kernels come along, you need to reboot.... no one likes to reboot servers, least of all me.)

[rclark]

Ditto. Wait if you plan on loading 7. Upgrades have 'never' fully worked for me and take a long time to upgrade anyway. Clean install is the way to go. That is why my /home directory is my data drive (a separate hard drive). I can wipe the OS hard drive (grabbing some of the critical configuration files first of course) and install new OS when I feel it is necessary to do so.

Oh course if the system isn't critical and your just kicking its wheels so to speak, just install FC6.... Later do a clean install of FC7. Your call.

[rclark]

changes are too frequent and when new kernels come along, you need to reboot....

My work server is Fedora 5. Solution is not to update the kernel! As said in another thread "If it isn't broke ... don't fix it" . Works for me. In fact I am still running 2.6.15... which came with the system when I bought it because it 'worked' ..... A file server need not be on the cutting edge! My two cents.

Hey erroneous, long time no see

Wayne

[jbordelon]

Thanks for the input, and the speedy response! I didn't plan on the upgrading actually working, but one can always hope.

I like the idea of putting the /home partition on a different drive, I may have to try that.

Thanks again!

--Jason

[NBZ]

Apparently for FC7 it is not reccomended to upgrade via yum from the previous release due to changes in how some modules are loaded up in the kernel. It can cause problems.

Can't seem to find the link, but it was some developer about a month or so ago who made a blog post about it onto Fedora people

[ihavenoname]

there is also the whole repository shuffle and other fabulous things. Fedora 7 seems to be a big step into a slightly different type of Fedora. I would try both to be honest. If you install Fedora 7 from the live cd it should take about 7-10 minutes, which isn't much. So long as you store your data on a different partition.

Welcome back.