Can Federa be installed by updating Red Hat?

[Phil Schaffner]

On Fri, 2005-03-11 at 11:18 -0800, Patrick Horgan wrote:
> I'm running Red Hat on my laptop and want to switch to Fedora.  Can it 
> be done as an update, or would I have to install over and existing 
> installation and lose the stuff I have in my partitions?  (Big pain in 
> the butt but at least I could come up with a smarter partitioning scheme 
> than I have;)

You don't say Red Hat what - RH7.x, RH8.0, RH9, RHEL3 (but that's
perhaps not highly relevant) nor what kind of upgrade yum (if an option
on your unspecified version) or anaconda.  I did upgrade from RH7.3 to
RH8.0 to RH9 to FC1 to FC2, then FC3 (over time as updates came out) on
my laptop without undue pain.  Everything except FC2->FC3 was done with
anaconda, the last via yum due to issues with my laptop and the FC3
installer kernel.  For direct RH whatever to FC3 your best chance for
success would be an anaconda upgrade - probably requires "upgradeany"
parameter IIRC.  Any attempt to upgrade with yum would require the
stepwise approach suggested by another poster.  (See below.)

http://lists.freshrpms.net/pipermail/freshrpms-list/2004-November/011423.html

http://linux.duke.edu/~skvidal/misc/fc1-fc2-yum-hints.txt

http://linux.duke.edu/~skvidal/misc/fc2-fc3-update-with-yum.txt

http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-list/2004-November/msg06636.html

http://lists.caosity.org/pipermail/centos/2005-March/003400.html

A clean install is nearly always preferable, but migrating data can be a
pain (thus my laptop upgrades).  Of course, back up first whatever you
do.

Another suggestion, budget permitting, you might consider a new hard
disk and an inexpensive external USB enclosure for your old drive.
Provides a full backup and access to your old stuff to aid migration
after a nice fresh start, plus the probable benefits of a larger/faster
hard disk.

Phil