[olug] Fedora 17

[Lou Duchez]

>
> [snippage]
>
> Wow, glad I always have done clean installs.  I used to think it was a PITA to do that and then fix things their standard install screws up, delete a bunch of unneeded and never to be used packages, fix their broken networking, etc...  Now I don't feel so bad :P
>
> On a different note, I've updated Ubuntu from 10.10 through to 12.04LTS without a hitch. Hmmmm....
>
>   
> Kevin D. Snodgrass
>

This was a special Fedora upgrade, where several key directories were 
merged together and it required careful handling.  The usual Fedora 
upgrade process is simpler:

1) Upgrade to the new version via yum.

2) Update the boot loader with grub2install.

3) You're done.

I'm also probably more meticulous than some about package cleanup, since 
I have never seen it hurt anything but it has helped at least once or 
twice.  I spelled out all the package cleanup steps and erred on the 
side of overkill.

Over the years, I've upgraded via yum dozens of times (I've got one 
server that I've been upgrading since, uh, Fedora Core 6 I think), and 
the only time it goes badly is if I forget to update my boot loader.  
The great advantage of upgrading this way is that your system remains 
almost completely intact after the reboot and there's only minor 
tweakage to get everything running as it was before.  And if it fails, 
well, there's always a standard install.