fedora upgrade?
 

i was woundering if i could lets say upgrade fedora 10 to 11 when it is released with out erasing any customizing that i have done?

ex. installing new fonts, multimedia, new package sources, any packages that i installed etc.

it depends what you've done. things in your /home directory should be untouched and arbitrary files like fonts will probably be untouched, but things you have installed by rpm will more than likely be deemed obsolete and be removed or upgraded as part of the process.

maybe BUT BACKUP all important data FIRST the "preupgrade/upgrade" dose not always work .
doing a fresh install is still the recommended method

so just curious but how often should you upgrade if you dont feel like redoing cuztomiztion every 6 months.

how often do yall upgrade?

Support for any one version of Fedora is only thirteen (13) months, after that there are no official updates of any kind. This is one of the reasons I switched to Centos (Free RHEL clone), it has a five year(plus) support life.

I will always have a spot for Fedora on my machines, but I have to admit that Fedora's rapid release schedule has caused me a few headaches in the past. I started using Linux with Red Hat 7, continued with Red Had until the final release in version 9, and have had a version of Fedora on my machines ever since. But Fedora moves so fast, that keeping a system as is and just upgrading is *almost* impossible anymore. And in the case of Fedora 11, it has outgrown even my one year old laptop (not Fedora's fault, but the new Xorg/ATI drivers will no longer work.)

So, I tend to keep the current version until about one month before support ends, which in the case of Fedora 10 will be about December 2009 I believe. I used to upgrade as soon as the new release became available, but it has moved so fast that it is just a pain now.

Bob

Well, my story is similar to BobN's. I started w/ redhat somewhere around 3 or 4. Typically I just upgrade shortly after the next version comes out. I don't usually do a fresh install, and I don't typically run a version long after the new version comes out. I did keep FC9 around a while on my work laptop, but that was because there was some software that didn't like 10. My plan is to switch to 11 as soon as I can download it and get a few hours time.

Forrest

i like fedora but i dont like that ill have to reinstall it every year, i like customizing alot. so i was woundering if there was a distro that was similar to fedora but has a longer lifespan. i dont want ubuntu because i heard it isnt very stable. could be mistaken though.

Try CentOS or Startcom

-C

Ubuntu is as stable as any of the "user friendly" distros. Quite stable for me. But, Ubuntu has about the same realease schedule that Fedora has, with one exception. They do release a long-term support (LTS) version once every three years that will be supports for three years on the desktop and five years on servers. To a new user, Ubuntu and Fedora will behave similarly, but they are VERY different distros. Ubuntu is definitely "easier" for someone coming over from Windows, but I find Fedora to be faster on most of the machines I run it on. Ugrades usually go OK on Ubuntu, but are many times a disaster on Fedora becuase Fedora is definitely more up to date that Ubuntu releases.

I am willing to go through the re-install pain because I like Fedora so much. You might want to consider a Fedora-like distro like CentOS ofr Debian (which releases are very slow to come around). And if you want speed and stability with a much longer release cycle, you might consider Slackware, but be prepared for a much steeper learning curve.

Bob

been using fedora since 4 and 1 to 2 months after the next one comes out i do a fresh install .I learned early on that having the OS on one partition and MY DATA on a different one ( including the programs i build ) makes installing fedora very easy .all i need to do is edit the new $HOME files to match the old ones .
but seeing as fedora 9 is the last fedora i can install on this 9 year old computer , i am migrating to CentOS 5.3.
until i get a new computer .

so what would be the advangtages and disadvanges of not upgrading fedora every few years.

If you go beyond the 13 month support life you will have no official updates of any kind. Any computer facing the net is subject to attack, not having any security updates increases the chances of a breach. Once a system is breached they can do whatever they wish (serve kiddy porn, relay an attack, etc) and the first person the authorities are going to look at is the owner of the system.

I don't mind upgrading all the time. I guess it's just personal preference. I do however keep my home directory backup up and I also have a little yum script on my desktop. As soon as I install something, usually from yum, I add it to the script. So when a new version is out I just install the new version, let it update, restore my home directory and repositories, and run my yum script and everything is almost back to normal.