WHY I WANT TO STOP USING FEDORA!!!

[Tarjei Knapstad]

2009/2/8 Tim <ignored_mailbox at yahoo.com.au>:
> On Sun, 2009-02-08 at 11:45 +0000, Alan Cox wrote:
>> I've got boxes I managed that started as Red Hat 6 or 7 that are
>> now Fedora 9 or 10 entirely by upgrading. Thats a bit like going
>> Windows 98 to Windows Vista without a reinstall and it works just
>> fine...
>
> It has to be said that for some people, at least, upgrading over the top
> doesn't go fine, and they all sorts of strange problems to resolve.
> Whether that be Linux or Windows.
>

Speaking for myself of course, but preupgrade has worked flawlessly
for me since it's appearance.

1. Run preupgrade while I do something else
2. Inspect any conflicts from the depsolving process, create a small
shell script that runs "yum remove <packages that are in conflict>".
(takes 5 minutes)
3. Re-run preupgrade while I do something else and verify that there
are no depsolving probs.
4. Reboot and start the upgrade before going to bed.
5. Wake up to a fresh fedora. Re-run my little shellscript after
replacing "yum remove" with "yum install"

Conflicts are always with packages from third party repos it seems, so
if preupgrade got a "remove/reinstall conflicting packages" option
this would be completely effortless, but this process really doesn't
feel any more painful to me than a yum update.

YMMV, but the days where fresh installs were "highly recommended" are
gone and there's no need to download and burn DVD images to upgrade.
So in reply to the OP:

> INSTEAD OF MAKING CONSUMERS INSTALL EVERY SIX MONTHS OR UNTIL THE
> UPDATES STOP, JUST PROVIDE LARGE UPDATES THAT UPGRADE A SYSTEM WITHOUT
> HAVING TO DO A COMPLETELY NEW INSTALL???

...we already have this option and it's called preupgrade. Give it a
try when F11 appears.

--
Tarjei