[CLUE-Tech] Upgrading to Red Hat V7.2 - Experiences?

[jimintriglia at americanisp.net]

Thanks everybody for you feedback and support. I'm in the process of verifying
my backups, then I'll proceed with updating my Penguin Pentium II Workstation to
RH V7.2.

Re: some of the comments on the old Dell 200MhZ Pentium I that does not read the
Red Hat V7.2 upgrade CD-ROM:

>Did you try swapping CD-ROMs like the tech recommended?  If not, I have 
>a spare I can loan you, and I'll be at the next CLUE meeting.

Thanks David - I appreciate the offer. :-)

> I have never, ever upgraded a Linux or even a Windows system. 
> I always clean-build, and usually onto a newly created partition.

I got away from M$ platform in 1997 because I tired of buying new PCs due to O/S
'upgrades', as well as playing the M$ re-install the operating system game, even
for the most *trivial problems* that were easily fixed (if one had the knowledge). 

Not planning on returning to that practice any time soon, but I understand where
you are coming from - thanks.

>I successfully installed Red Hat 7.1 on my P133 with 64MB, and it's
>still running quite happily there, so I'm not sure what the 132MB(?) 
>limitation is about...

Actually this P133 of mine has 64MB not 132MB, and Linux V7.1 refused to load on
it due to 'insufficient memory'. You're mileage varied. 

>Is the kernel image too large, or does the CD-ROM use a 2.88MB floppy
>"image" ? I know Slackware now uses a 2.88MB image that causes problems
>with some bioses.

Hmmm. I'd better check on that. This PC never had problems reading RH CD-ROMs
before, as it was installed with RH V6.0 all the way up to V7.0 with no
problems. The problem does center on the boot.img not being bootable by this PC
(boot disk works like a champ on the Penguin PC).

>If you prefer a slick, installer-does-all, shrink-wrapped packge with
>RPMs, stick with Red Hat or Mandrake or SuSE.

I picked Red hat back in 1999 because I thought it would be the choice of the
corporate CIO (it is). The automated tools, such as RPM and such, save time,
which is at a premium in most medium to large corporations. Some time there's
little time (or patience) for *tinkering*.

>  If you like to tinker
>and stay up to date, give this one a try.

The other side of the aforementioned argument is that automated tools (install,
RPM, Linuxconf, etc) can sure save time at the expense of knowing what the hell
is going on 'under the covers'. For the IT professional, it's not a good thing
to rely on 'Wizards' and not know what makes your system(s) tick. (What to do
when the Wizard fails?).

Bottom Line here - Red Hat Linux will be *removed* from my Dell P200, in favor
of a distro such a Debian and/or Slackware. Which I decide to go with will be
based on user statistics (which distro has the most small business/professional
users).

Thanks for all of your suggestions and perspectives on this.

Best,

JimI.

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