ok this seems like a simple question and Ive been "playing" with linux for sometime now but something still escapes me..
If a disto is basically a bunch of different packages on top of the kernel (yeah yeah.. but you know what Im saying), and Im running FC5... If I upgrade the kernel, all the packages to the latest and greatest, what makes FC6 different than FC5? Shouldnt I be able to upgrade each package piece by piece until I basically have FC6?

Have a read through http://www.fedora.redhat.com/docs/re...tes/fc6/en_US/

ok lets narrow it down a bit more
http://www.fedora.redhat.com/docs/re...html#id2974245
and if we go into more detail one example is
This release features the GnuCash 2.0 accounting application, which provides major new features and interface improvements. For more information, refer to GnuCash Features.

So why can I just download this package and the others to be simialr to 6?


Im not looking for the differences between 5 and 6... but why cant yum do the necessary upgrades? If its things like using a new and improved filesystem which would require a complete drive reformat, ok I understand that but anything else I just cant see why.

Your main issue would be running into dependency hell. The sytems are built around various libraries. The thing is, the require libraries are defined by the package maintainers in the rpm build files. If you update a package and it needs a newer library, you have to update that too... and if that one needs an updated package, you ahve to updat that too and so on. This becomes especially troublesome as you get closer and closer to bigger core libraries that many packages use. Essentially it becomes more of a hassle than its worth to just download 'what you want' so they just update the entire distribution.

YUM can handle distribution upgrades.

Basically, you download a small file called fedora-release, and install it using RPM. This file is in "/6/i386/os/Fedora/RPMS" of your favourite Fedora mirror. Then run "yum upgrade", which will upgrade all your currently installed packages to the FC6 ones. It won't install packages that you haven't already installed, unless they are required dependencies.

Then you can install any other applications that you want that are in FC6 but not FC5, such as GNUCash.

Most distros have similar functionality. With Debian, you can use "apt-get dist-upgrade" in a similar way.

I hope this helps
--Ian

Disclaimer: I have not actually done this with Fedora - I always to a full reinstall. I found the above information using Google.

I have done an update on a play machine from dvd which kept all my settings, etc. Seems to have worked fine

yum is exactly what Im talking about. If I have all the latest updates and yum takes care of all the dependicies why cant yum handle a FC5 to FC6 upgrade?

ryedunn - check out this thread.

It tells you exactly how to use YUM to upgrade from Fedora Core 5 to Fedora Core 6.

--Ian

Thats excatly what I was looking for, thanks man!

Will see the site too . I have been asking a similar question repeatedly .