[lug] Installing from DVD and Don't skip Upgrades

[Nate Duehr]

gordongoldin at aim.com wrote:
> 
> 
>     From: "Michael J. Hammel" <mjhammel at graphics-muse.org <mailto:mjhammel at graphics-muse.org>>
> 
>     Subject: [lug] Installing from DVD
> 
>      Fedora 7 only comes on DVD.   It's time to upgrade from
> 
>     FC5 (since ATrpms doesn't support it anymore).
> 
> Two things:  
> 1)  When I jumped from FC3 to FC5, skipping FC4, I regretted it later.  
> All sorts of little quirks.  Maybe do 6, 7?
> 
>  I am "rehabilitating" a bunch of old machines w/o DVD readers. 

FC and RedHat prior to them have never put much value on upgrades -- 
things break regularly.  Debian and variants open CRITICAL bugs against 
packages that can't be upgraded sanely during an "apt-get dist-upgrade".

I find their level of detail and professionalism (considering that many 
of the RH folks were PAID and still didn't have a policy that upgrade 
failures were CRITICAL bugs) better than RH/Fedora... based mainly on 
some early upgrade fiasco scenarios I also went through.

(Thus, and while I have no malice toward the RH/Fedora fans, since I 
find their engineering discipline lacking for something that should 
"just work"... I have avoided the RH/Fedora variants as much as possible 
for years.  Try finding a document like Debian's Packager Guide for RH. 
  Even though they had paid engineers, they never took it to that level, 
at least out in the community.  They may have them internal to the 
company, but who cares?  I want to SEE it.)

> <<Comic interlude:  I was told they had CD/DVD readers.  Some time ago, 
> I had a hell of a time burning a bootable DVD - so I took it for granted 
> I had a burn problem.  You should have seen the conniption fits, trying 
> to create a bootable DVD of FC7.  Til the light caught just right on the 
> black plastic of the CD/DVD reader door - and I noticed the letters DVD 
> seemed to have fallen off...   :-)   >>

Awesome!  :-)  Haven't done that one, but I could see how easily it 
could happen.  Heh heh.  Saw someone fighting with a Sun server one 
afternoon for the same reason, though.  :-)

> 2)  I had FC6 CD1 and FC6 rescue CDs hanging around.  Just shoved them 
> in and did HTTP installs.  Easiest thing in the world.
> But then I guess I cheat. I'm connected to campus, which seems to have 
> suddenly gotten a REAL FAST connection to one of the government 
> institutions with a mirror.

He who dies with the most bandwidth, wins.  You'll miss it when you 
leave campus.  It's almost a "requirement" nowadays to finding good 
engineers... "Do you have at least a DS-3 to the Net?"  :-)

Sorry to rant about RH/Fedora.  I have other serious reasons to not like 
it that are both based in engineering/technical fact, and somewhat in my 
own biases.  I'll use RH/Fedora when I have to, and always RHEL or the 
free variant, CentOS when I can... avoiding the Fedora "14 year old 
playground" mess, most of the time now.

Nate