I am planning to switch from fc8 to centos 5.1, and I was wondering what settings I can take with me? I am running mythtv and Zoneminder, I have backed up the databases, can I use the existing xorg.conf? Should i backup the existing /etc folder ? Or will centos perform an upgrade?

Thanks.

You have to understand that C5.1(RHEL5.1) was based on FC6. It is almost always suggested to do a complete clean install. For Example C5.1 uses Firefox 1.5 and F8 uses 2.0. If you try to mix and match across versions you can generate problems for your system that are extremely hard to track down.

Definitely do a clean install. It may be RH & rpm based, but treat it as a different distro or you'll be sorry.

As for the firefox issue, just download the official binaries from mozilla.com, stick them in /opt, chmod them to your user and enjoy.

Keep the xorg.conf if you have any custom tweaks.

My backup policy for my machines is to backup /etc, any useful scripts in /usr/bin, anything worth keeping in /opt and thats about it. I already have backups of things like skins for gkrellm, xmms, mplayer, etc. If you have any custom backgrounds in /'usr/share/backgrounds, remember to tar those as well.

As long as you seperated /home partition in the first place, there shouldnt be a problem as you can rewrite your / partition with the new distro and be back on your feet within an hour or so, even less if you write a script to automate the installation of your favourite apps and utils.

Nowadays i run a dev directory within my users home, and i stick all my favourite apps, utils and games in there, so anything i personally use is always going to be available to me, and wont require the same level of backups as i normally do.