Robert, > > I wish they'd come up with a way that is smoother like other Unix based OSes like Tru64 Unix, Mac OS X and others that will help you upgrade in place. Unfortunately that's not the model with Linux. One can hope and dream. Having spent many years supporting OpenVMS, this was one of the nicer features of that OS from the very beginning. > Debian do have this ability already so its distribution specific, not Linux issue > I'm really not sure why the engineering teams behind OS upgrades for linux think that their method of delete and reimage for major upgrades is an acceptable model. It makes it more simple in terms of clearing the deck of any cruft that the previous release(s) might have included that need to go away instead of having to carefully craft scripts that will comb through and eject things that must disappear. I think its more than cleaning up unneeded packages. More of dependency issues. Why Debian pull it and Redhat fail I am not sure. May be its has something to do with apt verses yum. > . Am I wrong? Anyone have a different experience than this? Tell me there's a magic easy way and I'll be happy to learn it. > > No magic I think. Everything has to be fixed manually. What I have done when in this situation is dump all the rpm in the old system. Then strip off the version extension and insure they are on the new system. Do anyone have a better way than this by the way? Would be great to share. William