Upgrade vs Reinstall

[Jim Cornette]

> 
> If I'm not mistaken, the one major flaw in upgrading is that, while
everything you have installed is upgraded to the levels in the new
distribution, you miss out on anything / everything that is new to the
distribution. So a neat new package that didn't exist in FC2 or before,
that is now included in FC3 by default, won't show up on your system
during the upgrade.

You also miss out on different configuration changes that might make 
certain hardware work. I upgraded from 5.2 through 6.x series and kept 
it going through the 7.x series. I missed out on a working CD burner 
when they added the ide-scsi option to the kernel and CDs started to 
work for burning. I installed a new system because of a disk failure and 
was surprised that I could burn CDs.
Just an example why Installing would be better than an upgrade.

for the next phase where the installer offers less programs as choices, 
along with less packages available in core, upgrading seems a better 
option from FC3 to what will be FC4.

> 
> I had upgraded beginning with RH 7.3, through 8 and 9, then to FC1.
Then I started noticing people talking about "program such and such",
and I didn't have it. It would seem that, other than hand installing a
bunch of stuff after upgrading, there's no simple way to pick up
anything "new" from distribution to distribution.

There should be a psuedo-package that is named whats-new available via 
the installer (or group such as tools, KDE, GNOME, Graphics ... have) 
which will allow users to select new programs which were not available 
when earlier distributions came out.

> 
> (Please, someone; Prove me wrong...) >

Your not wrong. :-)

As a note for upgrading from FC3 to FC4, currently you need kernel-devel 
pulled in to build modules. On the "Lighter side", you need some 
program-extra packages for some programs (xsreensaver-extras, for example).

Jim


-- 
Johnson's law:
	Systems resemble the organizations that create them.