I can't find any info in this forum specifically labeled, can someone point me to a helpful thread(s)?

or up for discussion:


I have Fedora 7(moonshine) on a P4 (2.6), 2gig ram, nvidia 128 dual,2 evov 17" lcd's, somewhat bare box compared to all the fancy boxes out there.

So I need to, if I understand correctly, upgrade live from the internet. I am not a Linux wiz but I had a wonderful experience installing Moonshine onto my desktop. I would like some of the added updated features of Fedora 9 otherwise I probably would not make any change.

I googled upgrade from 7 to 9 and found a handful of info that I have tried but I don't think it has worked.

Where do I start and what is the correct process to install F9, (or is there F10 now?) over F7?

Much appreciate all the help.

Csmel

Certainly step 1 is to make an image backup of the system partition. I recommend booting System Rescue CD and using partimage to make the backup. It is a very reliable tool. I use it all the time and I regularly restore from backups made with this software.

http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page

Other than that I would recommend making a fresh installation rather than upgrading. Put the fresh installation into its own partition so that you can dual boot the F7 and the new one.

Fresh installs are always the best bet.

Ah, a fresh install. I believe I have the room. What is the best link and the best way to do a fresh install?

Part of my problem is that I have no cd burner. I have backed up some kword files to an external drive via usb. I guess I could image whatever I want to that drive as well. But I have space limitations on the external drive as well as command knowledge limitations in my brain.

I would love to have some more detailed help but I want to stick to this thread as well.

Can I migrate the files I want or share the files like kword from Fed 7 to Fed 9? What would be the purpose of having the dual boot of F7 and F9? I love Moonshine but I assume I would enjoy more the Rawhide and therefore eliminate Moonshine.

Can I use the same operations as in the 'sysresccd' but use an external usb drive instead of a CD?

So no good advise on doing an upgrade. A fresh install is what I should plan on. One of my concerns was to try and save my data from F7 so that an upgrade to F9 would keep my data.

Thanks for all the help...!

Regarding making a backup, you would want to put that on an external drive rather than CDs. It's just so much easier to use an external drive.

You may find KOffice compatibility problems. The reason that I abandoned KOffice is that it's file formats do not play nicely with other OSS office productivity software or even with new versions of KOffice. I remember that I moved from one KDE version to another and ended up with endless problems regarding my KDE applications and the data stored in their formats. I still use KDE but I use Open Office.org and Mozilla Sunbird and other non-KDE applications to store my important data. Now a KDE upgrade would not endanger my ability to use my data.

That one area is probably where I developed my preference for new installations rather than upgrades. Those same kind of compatibility issues can arise with system software like Samba or LDAP or anything that you depend on.

The dual boot should configure itself if you do a normal Linux automatic installation. I'm not familiar with the newest Red Hat installer (Anaconda?) but most Linux installers handle the details of creating a dual boot environment with no trouble.