How to upgrade from RH8 to FC? Is it safe?

[David G. Miller]

The Nice Spider <thenicespider at yahoo.com> wrote:

> If I want to upgrade RH8 to FC then which version of
> FC should I use?
> Is it safe to upgrade from RH to FC? Please share your
> experience here to help me.
Your best bet would be to back up any user data and do a clean install.  
Since you're still running RH8, you might do better with a RHEL clone 
like CentOS that emphasizes stability over "cutting edge." 

If I remember correctly, the main difference between RH8 and RH9 was gcc 
moving from 2.x to 3.0.  This meant that all RH8 binaries were 
potentially incompatible with the RH9 kernel.  RH8 was primarily a 
"revenue release" since it really didn't include anything new above 
RH7.3.  It probably should have been RH7.4 but then nobody would have 
bought it.  Current FC releases use gcc 4.1.1.

Bottom line is any custom binaries you had for RH8 will at least need to 
be recompiled for Fedora.  Any "standard" programs have probably changed 
so much or evolved to something different that it's very doubtful that 
many settings, rc files, etc. will come forward.  Figure out what things 
you need to re-implement, copy them off and then do a clean install.

Cheers,
Dave

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