Re: [tlug] Re: Multimedia Distros _out_of_the_box_

[Al Hoang <hoanga@example.com>]

On Thu, Nov 09, 2006 at 01:41:49PM +0900, Josh Glover wrote:
> On 09/11/06, Darren Cook <darren@example.com> wrote:
> 
> >I don't use linux for the thrill of it, just to get my development work
> >done (as well as browsing, email, watching videos, etc.). I hate
> >up-to-speed time on something that isn't part of my main purpose in
> >life.
> 
> Then why did you upgrade at all?
> 
	Josh must be immune to 'shiny toy syndrome'.  :)  Seems to be
an affliction that strikes 7 out of 10 geek types [1] and has been known
to cause massive amounts of lost productivity and sleepless nights.

	On a more serious note.  If FC4 was working just fine for you
I agree with Josh.  If you were TRULY using Linux for pure utility value
and FC4 had hit your personal requirements checklist then upgrading really
had no value besides being a useful data point to the Fedora testing team.
But I'm going to guess your real motives were somewhere in between and you
wanted to try some shiny new packages.
	If I remember correctly, you mentioned you've been using Redhat
for a long time.  If that is the case, you must be aware that upgrades
between major releases for Redhat have a long history of not going smoothly
at all.  Did you believe this would be any different?   The reason quite
a few people here use different distributions is because some distros have
a much smoother upgrade process over time for them (ex. Debian) at the
expense of something else (Xen isn't integrated in.  Something else
requires tweaking here or there)
	I can understand the inertia to NOT switch to a different distribution
because you are used to how Fedora does things but Fedora is Fedora and it
has a very short lifespan in terms of release cycles.  If you really want
long term and don't want to switch away from a RPM-based distro, I would 
suggest CentOS or Redhat Enterprise Linux as many others suggested.  In
the meantime, it might be well worth your time buying a 300GB external hard
drive and dumping a full system image backup before you upgrade if you want
a rather painless 'undo'.  Hopefully, you don't have a terabyte of critical
data that needs migrating :)

	If you want to bring your cranky FC5 box to the TLUG meeting I'll 
be happy to spend some time trying to help you get it to a state you want 
working again (if I can) but I'm afraid I have no useful tweak advice like 
go to /etc/sysconfig/fixmyproblems and set a magic param to 1 for you at 
this point.


Cheers,
Alain

[1] Completely and utterly baseless statistic.