How to downgrade Fedora to previous release?

[Peter Lemenkov]

2008/4/27 Hans de Goede <j.w.r.degoede at hhs.nl>:
> Peter Lemenkov wrote:
>
> > Hello All!
> > Since Fedora 9-Preview completely unuseable for me


>  Thats very bad news! Why is it unusable for you, can you give please a list
> of issues and bugzilla numbers for those?

The first thing I want to talk about is hardlycorrupted fonts in every
(from 2 - Psi and Firefox) of GUI applications. See screenshots:

http://peter.fedorapeople.org/bad_fonts.png
http://peter.fedorapeople.org/bad_fonts2.png
http://peter.fedorapeople.org/bad_fonts3.png
http://peter.fedorapeople.org/bad_fonts_psi.png

I can't fill bugzilla ticket because I just don't know exactly to what
component this issue must be assigned - xorg-x11, some particular
driver, some middleware layer as pango/gtk/qt/etc, maybe this is bug
in freetype or somethere - I don't know.

I can't submit this bug for a list of possible components - I need to
choose something (and probably I will make a wrong choose since I'm
not a specialist in X.org architecture)

This is a issue with a communication part - I can't describe my
problem with a more freeform text than bugzilla permits (only one
version of distro, only one particular component, only maintainer(s)
of current one component). On the other hand bugzilla, this Monster
from the 90ies provides us many completely useless (for simple users,
Average Joe as me, for example) combinations of
Priority/Severity/Status and Resolution. I think that must be only two
of them - opened/closed...

Summarizing things - I shouting that bugzilla in no way a suitable
solution for filling bugs for users then they are don't know anything
about internals of issue. More to say - they must look at the Bugzilla
as a Labyrinth designed for hiding the solutions within.

>  F-9 preview is working quite nicely for me, I had 2 major issues, but after
> going into bugfixing mode myself for a day and then being on the hide of the
> maintainers to put my patches in before F-9 has resolvedthose 2 issues.

Fedora tends to be overbloated. More and more dependencies are coming.
For example - my bluetooth mouse need a half part of samba to work -
can you imagine that?

auriga:~ petro$ ssh 192.168.1.67
Last login: Sun Apr 27 17:51:21 2008 from auriga
[petro at Sulaco ~]$ sudo yum remove samba*
Loaded plugins: fastestmirror
Setting up Remove Process
Loading mirror speeds from cached hostfile
 * fedora: ftp.chg.ru
 * livna-development: mirror.atrpms.net
 * updates: ftp.chg.ru
Resolving Dependencies
--> Running transaction check
---> Package samba-common.ppc 0:3.2.0-1.pre2.8.fc9 set to be erased
---> Package samba-winbind.ppc 0:3.2.0-1.pre2.8.fc9 set to be erased
--> Processing Dependency: libwbclient.so.0 for package: libsmbclient
--> Running transaction check
---> Package libsmbclient.ppc 0:3.2.0-1.pre2.8.fc9 set to be erased
--> Processing Dependency: libsmbclient.so.0 for package: gvfs
--> Running transaction check
---> Package gvfs.ppc 0:0.2.3-11.fc9 set to be erased
--> Processing Dependency: gvfs >= 0.1.11-2 for package: bluez-gnome
--> Running transaction check
---> Package bluez-gnome.ppc 0:0.25-1.fc9 set to be erased
--> Processing Dependency: dbus-bluez-pin-helper for package: bluez-utils
--> Running transaction check
---> Package bluez-utils.ppc 0:3.30-2.fc9 set to be erased
--> Finished Dependency Resolution

Dependencies Resolved

=============================================================================
 Package                 Arch       Version          Repository        Size
=============================================================================
Removing:
 samba-common            ppc        3.2.0-1.pre2.8.fc9  installed          50 M
 samba-winbind           ppc        3.2.0-1.pre2.8.fc9  installed         9.1 M
Removing for dependencies:
 bluez-gnome             ppc        0.25-1.fc9       installed         624 k
 bluez-utils             ppc        3.30-2.fc9       installed         1.6 M
 gvfs                    ppc        0.2.3-11.fc9     installed         4.1 M
 libsmbclient            ppc        3.2.0-1.pre2.8.fc9  installed         4.3 M

Transaction Summary
=============================================================================
Install      0 Package(s)
Update       0 Package(s)
Remove       6 Package(s)

Is this ok [y/N]:

No, this is not OK. Let's simply provide a fedora-9.rpm with
all-in-one inside - with tens of langpacks that can't be splitted into
their own packages from Firefox because maintainers against it w/o
reasons, with huge loads of pictures and icons that can't be removed
(hardest dependency!). With current idea of binary deltas we could
save bandwidth if this is an issue...

>  About downgrading, I think backing up /etc/ and /home (you should really
> put /home on a separate partition) and then doing a clean install is best.
> Or you could spend the same time trying to resolve those F-9 issues, helping
> the community and Fedora in general in the process.

Yes, that's reasonable decision.

Funny but I more and more time spending working in Mac environment
(because of the Fedora issues). One note - Safari complains about
bugzilla's query pages (looks like nobody tested them in Safari)

-- 
With best regards!