Installation of Fedora over SuSE

[Jason Shein]

On March 6, 2005 05:20 pm, William Park wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 06, 2005 at 03:57:14PM +0000, Jason Shein wrote:
> > Well I have totally moved away from any RPM based distros. In the past
> > I have used Mandrake, Fedora, SuSE and many others.
> >
> > Linux is advancing at a staggering rate. This means that new versions of
> > your favorite distro are becoming available every 6-9 months.
> > Unfortunately there is no painless, failsafe upgrade procedure for
> > Mandrake, Fedora, or SuSE. If you read any of their forums you will find
> > in every one, that the upgrade procedure available on the new cd's is
> > never recommended, for various reasons.
> >
> > By using Debian or Gentoo based distros, you are constantly updating your
> > machine to the newest features, enhancements and bugfixes.
> >
> > Debian "unstable" is just as stable as any RPM based distro. Apt-get is a
> > fantastic method of managing your packages.
> >
> > If you install gentoo you will always have the latest and greatest
> > installed system. For example if you install 2004.6 and do all your
> > updates, when 2005.0 comes out , you will have the same installed system
> > without having to wipe and upgrade from the new media.
> >
> > Everyone has their opinons of what is the perfect distro. I just got
> > frustrated with RPM dependency hell and lack of smooth upgrade
> > procedures.
> >
> > If you want a GUI installer then take a look into:
> >
> > Xandros open circulation edition ( Debian )
> > http://www.xandros.com/products/home/desktopoc/dsk_oc_intro.html
> > review here http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=9848
> >
> > Vidalinux ( pre compiled Gentoo )
> > http://desktop.vidalinux.com/
> > review here  http://madpenguin.org/cms/html/47/3321.html
>
> Slackware doesn't have any dependency problem, because it doesn't do
> dependency check at all. :-)  To upgrade, back up modified files (you do
> that anyways), wipe clean, do full install, restore backed files.

Exactly my point. Time not well spent. With Gentoo or Debian you can spend 
your time using your system, not upgrading and reinstalling all your custom 
configurations you spent so much time "getting it just right".

Having your software you looked long and hard for, or your desktop 
configurations lost can be deterring for a new user. Sure you or I know how 
to back up the configuration files, and reinstall them, but why the need to 
do so?

Try doing an upgrade with SuSE. Any packages not direcly from SuSE become 
blacklisted, and forced to uninstall. I understand that this is for library 
compatibility, but the aggravation is too much.

With a debian or gentoo based install your local guru or linux tech can 
administer the system online via ssh. 

No more wiping and reinstalling, because after all, we are trying to get away 
from the Windows way of doing things aren't we?


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Jason Shein
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