My main PC runs Red Hat 9, which you may know is approaching "end of life" - i.e. Red Hat won't support it with updates, etc. after the end of April.

I now have the CDs for Fedora Core 1, which I'll be using for the next PC which comes my way For the existing RH9 machine, I'm considering using the "upgrade distribution" option in apt-get, as it sounds like a less risky/destructive option than using the Fedora CDs for the upgrade.

My question is, is it less risky? I'd be very interested in hearing from anyone here who has upgraded their entire RH distribution with apt-get, especially if you had problems and would advise caution. On the other hand, is it relatively painless?

Many thanks in advance for your thoughts.

Tim

P.S. I realise upgrading the distribution online will take a while, but I have a broadband connection at home so I can just leave it going all night if need be

You have strange wishes. As much as I know 'apt-get' is used in debian based distributions. RedHat is an RPM distribution. It will probably be very complicated.

If you want to have an easy upgrade path in the future, try SuSE distributions. SuSE has a configuration tool named YaST. There you can define install location. If new version becomes available you just change the source path (FTP server directory) and conduct a system update

Depending on the degree of optimization (customiztion) you've made into your computer, you could stick to it or just upgrade with FC1 (which will upgrade RH 8-9 just fine, keeping even much of your customizations). You can use apt-get for RPM from shrike.freshrpms.net, and use their updates. Of course you can do the same with Fedora via yum or apt-get (your choice).

Just one note in the event of an FC update: You will have to install the package rhgb after installation by hand to get graphical boot mode.

Sohni said:

And I always thought I was boringly normal...

I should've mentioned I use the Red Hat/RPM version of apt-get and Synaptic, and have done for the last few months. Takes much of the pain out of installing RPMs, especially where there are dependencies.

From Thetargos:

As long as I knew what I was doing, that would be OK... except I don't, so I'd have to look for a HOWTO

On reflection, I may just leave the distribution as it is. It isn't particularly "broken" - in fact, I think I've got it working just right - so I'm wary of trying to change anything which might knock everything over.

I just thought I might miss the automatic updates from RH, but now it means I'll have to actually think about what I'm doing, and might learn something...

Thanks for the food for thought!

Tim

NP