[Novalug] Fedora Linux - How to upgrade it - Must use ...

Walt Smith waltechmail@yahoo.com
Mon Oct 26 10:28:23 EDT 2009


hi,

Since there's so little uninteresting traffic on this list,
I thought I'd relate my upgrade experience ( gee, maybe I
should explicitly say the preceeding was said with tongue-in-cheek ).

1.  as a reminder, doing a +1 upgrade took me about 4 times
longer than a fresh install.  I tried this several times.
(I said "reminder" because that has been discussed prior in this list )

2.  A couple years ago, I tried, and succeeded twice ( 2 different
occasions ) on upgrading by hand.  OK, so I'm a masocist.  Chalk
it up to wanting to know more about the rpms.. I also did this
on more that a +1 upgrade.  It's a Q of picking what comes first.
Yes, I mean a lot of typing $rpm -ivh blach by hand !!!!
package after package after package... it has great instructional
quality !!  It's like falling off a bike: everyone should try it once !!

Start with the kernel.  It installs the boot and kernel.  But you
need binutils. Eventually, you figure out what you need to get
something BOOTABLE !!  You can ALWAYS work with something BOOTABLE!!.
Once you have that, you can do a little networking, or peripheral
setup if you really need those things..The point, is to keep upgrading.

X is next.  You need a few rpms here.. check dependencies.  Eventually,
you get and X window.  From there, you can do a  gnome or kde or
whatever minimal icewm etc...   

Finally, you can shovel in your apps. And then fine tune.
Yeah, it takes awhile.
Yeah, it takes a LOT of typing $rpm -ivh blahblah.rpm
yeah, it takes a lot of rpm -q -requires ...  or --provides...

If one has quick fingers, and a 25 y/o's memory, one can probably
do it in about the same time as "upgrade" on top of existing OS.

Unfortunately, the rpm names have been changed over a little time: 
the audio system is different, networking names have changed, /dev/dha
is no longer ....  

I have F10 ( notice I didn't say "core" !).
I look at F12, and there's a dozen brand spanking new buzzwords
"we have new blahblah, and ... "   And I go HUHHHhhhhh...????  as if
I'm expected to go "Find" out what they are...  

SORRY !! I've tried the "project" web pages.  They don't say anything
either: unknown  buzzwords referencing other buzzwords referencing ...
EXCEPT they aLL say: easy to use, configurable, latest, new..
(but what the heck *IS* it ????? )

Network-Device Control  ( uh,,, under "about" it's System-Config-Network"
doesn't work.  Yes, I dial. All of 48k. I can't cancel a dial without crashing.  Can't do a few other things without crashing.   Bug file?
no.  Did that.  This program used to use the same config file as wvdial.
But thats another story..( bug report was ignored this was few years ago.).

Is nss.so under libnss.rpm or nss.rpm ?   uh, it's really nss3.so ..

But lets get back to upgrading ...

One thing really --really -- irks me. Today, yesterday, last week...
last year...

Does Fedora know how to make a CD or DVD ?  I think not.

Do an install.
I would think, that after about 5 minutes of installing, the dang
hard disk ought to have a minimally usable bootable system.
Then a  little later, some minimal X.  etc..  The if I had a problem,
I could recover by booting the HD and not having to go thru the dang
DVD startup again!!

But it don't.
Watch the order of installation from the CD/DVD.
An X might be installed after 75%:  The kernel is 60% in or 80%. 
Binutils get installed before the kernel.  Gnome apps
get installed before X.  DOHHHhhhhhhh !!!!!

By the way, I update packages using rpm. It doesn't take much to do
$rpm- Uvh blah.rpm  Did I say that ?  Try yum...  It does over a 
1 meg D/L/ -- sometimes 2 --before it does anything useful.  However,
I DID use yum a couple times to find unknown dependencies because I could
NOT find where the H-LL blah.so.1 resided !!   rpmfind helps sometimes.
again, I save the rpm file to the disk.

yum is flawed. As far as I can tell, it won't find and then D/L
and simply "save" a dang rpm to the hard disk.  I keep ALL my D/L
rpms in an 'update" dir because one never knows..  

Someone might note that I didn't mention apt.  I only know it's been
mentioned on this list as something for Debian.  Another buzzoword.
I've never used Debian. No reason to.  Is there REALLY a diff ?
I've no complaint.  To me, it's another distro.  I have tried other
distros ion the past:  F9, F6, FC5, FC3, FC2...Redhat 9, RH8, RH5..
SORRY.. does this sound like loyalty ??

OK, I loaded up Caldera's once.. I ran a minilinux on a floppy once
just to try it out.  yes,  a 1.44 meg linux.  And I used slackware.
It was version 2.0..

Of note, I have a desire to do some programming. I play with Fedora
mostly for fun. Web browsing, mono, Open Office calc.. I definitely
have no desire to be a sys admin.  It's too dangerous.  Same for
"maintenance or operations " work.  I don't envy the pressure.

I really really like the philosophy of RedHat.  At one time, many 
tech folk were extremely worried that RH might become another Microsoft.
I think the many years of keeping true OS has evaporated those notions.
OTOH, I really wish a set of codecs woudl magically be in the distro.

I have a suggestion:
REdHat should create a corporate subsidiary and it's business model
would be Fedora plus codecs.  Or maybe I should get a RHEL.
( can't wait for the discussion !).

PS: I have nothing again any other distro, Debian etc...
I just got "stuck" on Fedora !!


Walt......



      



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