Major version updates vs reinstall

[Michael Schwendt]

On Thu, 09 Sep 2004 05:28:02 -0700, Douglas Phillipson wrote:

> Mike Burger wrote:
> > On Thu, 9 Sep 2004, Douglas Phillipson wrote:
> > 
> > 
> >>The Debian project has a very nice capability in that it can be upgraded 
> >>without reinstalling, even upgrading to the next major version.  Will 
> >>Redhat/Fedora ever attain this highly desired ability?  What prevents 
> >>Redhat's OS's from doing this?  Is there any effort in this area?
> > 
> > 
> >>From my understanding, it is already possible, using apt-get or yum.
> 
> So the upgrade from RHES 3 to ES 4 will just be an "up2date"?

Comparing Debian GNU/Linux with a commercially supported Red Hat
Enterprise Linux is like comparing apples and oranges.

> And Fedora core 2 to core 3 will be a yum update?

It is possible to upgrade to and from Fedora Core with package resolvers
like Yum or Apt-Rpm (as a side-note, in the past some people have done
live-upgrades of Red Hat Linux systems with plain rpm already). It's
just that you may need a new kernel _prior_ to performing an upgrade
(e.g. for SELinux, LVM2 and other feature enhancements) and the package
tools don't contain any special support for upgrades to major
distribution releases and the Fedora Core Installer does a few
post-install adjustments which are not performed by Yum or Apt-Rpm.

  http://www.brandonhutchinson.com/Upgrading_Red_Hat_Linux_with_yum.html

Whether a Python based application can break during an upgrade to a
major Python version and unexpected trouble, remains to be seen.

Anyway, I don't see the benefit of doing live-upgrades to a new
distribution release when the installed software upgrades require
you to go through your configuration/customization while the system
is running. And you would need to reboot the new kernel anyway.

-- 
Fedora Core release 2 (Tettnang) - Linux 2.6.7-1.494.2.2
loadavg: 0.00 0.13 0.45