>> What? Are you calling backing up everything on your 10Gig hard
>> disk, formatting all partitions and installing a whole new
>> distribution, then spending 3 months reconfiguring everything
>> back to the state it was in before starting - impossible? It's
>> actually quite easy, it just takes 3 months. ;o)
>>
>> Thats opposed to the 30 minutes or so it takes to upgrade a
>> RedHat system.
<FLAME REPELLANT>
>
><flame>
> Mike, stop it! If you really need to demonstrate your incompetence
>- find less offensive ways to do that, PLEASE. And that's it -
>demonstration of incompetence. I'm not too fond of Slackware, but
No incompetence at all. I had used Slackware for a long time
before switching very reluctantly to RedHat. The Slackware
upgrade process as per docs said basically "backup, delete,
install new system, restore old stuff, and reconfigure". The
HOWTO documents that described upgrading basically said the same
as well. If necessary I can pull out the old HOWTO's and Slack
docs off my old Slack CD's.
Therefore being an ex-slackware user, I am perfectly competent to
comment on the process as is anyone else. Slackware was IMHO a
great system in its time, and I hold nothing against it. Without
Slackware, I would not be using Linux of any flavor right now.
Slackware is dear to me, in the same way that the Commodore 64,
and older systems are. I love emulators of old stuff, and I hold
strong the thoughts of once something is good, it is always good
with respect to the time it was good in, etc... So I think of
Slackware as a good experience, with good memories. I outgrew it
eventually however, and now I look at it as nostalgia - for MY
OWN PURPOSES. I recommend it still to certain people who I think
would benefit from it more than other dists... Each dist has
advantages, and disadvantages. Slackware's however was certainly
not the upgrading process.
> a) system by itself doesn't take anywhere near 10G.
Correct, however my system has 12G of stuff that would have to be
backed up if I was running slackware to ensure that the upgrade
process would work. My data can't take chances. With RedHat you
can have problems too, but most people I know that did the
auto-upgrade had little if any problems. I myself was very
reluctant, but I backed up everything important, and risked it.
The RH upgrade worked flawlessly for me, and has worked flawless
every time I've done so.
Before you respond (or anyone else has) that RedHat's upgrade
sucks or didn't work for them, I'll grant you that it is true.
Not everyone likes it, and it isn't flawless for everyone in
every situation. However, my comments based on *MY* experiences,
and are *MY* opinions. I am free to have those opinions, and am
not incompetent for doing so.
> b) even reformat, yodda, yodda way _doesn't_ force you to mkfs
>your /home. On any system.
No it doesn't. Installing one dist on top of another, even the
same dist without clearing the /, /usr, etc.. dirs is asking for
it. I've had direct bad experiences doing so. That doesn't mean
that everyone will. My comments were not based on everyone
else's experiences however, they were based on my own.
> c) 3 months isn't even a humor - it's blatant FUD. Or
>sign of >utter idiocy on part of admin. Take your pick.
It's neither humor, nor FUD. Anytime I've upgraded ANY OS, it
takes a long time to reconfigure everything back to the point it
was on the previous OS. This goes for Windows, Linux of any
distribution, and any other OS. You keep finding little things
that you forgot to change. Aliases, color dirs, custom installed
software. Recompiles to get things working with the new system,
etc.... It is an ongoing process. My experience with Slackware
upgrades was that it took a long time to get things back to where
they were. And yes, some things took 3 months. Sendmail is one
example. I'm certainly no sendmail guru, but I didn't have to
fiddle much with it in the first slackware I installed, the
second one didn't work at all.
> d) if you didn't back up your /etc before _any_ upgrade on _any_
>UNIX - you are idiot.
Now *THAT* I agree with. I back up a hell of a lot more than
just /etc. I usually back up all filesystems entirely when space
permits, and when it doesn't, I only back up critical stuff.
> e) BTW, as for the 'backing everything up' - so, you don't do
>it on regular basis? Should I say 'incremental backup strategy'?
Can I say "Home computer system"? Can I say "most home computer
systems neither have, nor can afford a "backup strategy" other
than simple backups? I now have a CDRW drive to do backups on,
so that situation is changing.
Your comments seem to reflect that we are coming from 2
completely different situations. I am a self taught in Linux
having had no UNIX experience prior to that, but having had
a system level VMS administration course in college. I've been
using Linux for 3.5 years now, and am completely self taught.
I consider myself to be quite an expert in some areas, and a
complete novice in other areas. At any rate, this system is a
home machine, and I agree that backup strategies are important,
but are not always a reality on home systems. Cost is one
reason for people not having such a system in place. Until now
that has been my primary reason as well.
> f) Let's not go into warts of RH upgrade process - lusers can (and
>do) burn their asses with RH too. Said that, it's none of their business
>to touch the system-wide configuration. On _any_ OS.
I'll also agree with you there too.
></flame>
</FLAME REPELLANT>
In summary, I've experienced Slackware up until Slack 3.2, and
RedHat from 4.2 through to the new 5.2. I have my opinion on
what system is the better system and why. I find the RedHat
system to be superior in the upgrade process than Slackware due
to my personal experience installing and upgrading several
hundred installations of those systems. All in all, RedHat has
been easier to deal with, upgrading, installing, configuring,
customizing, and adding on software with nothing breaking due to
the robustness of RPM.
That is where my comments stemmed from, and I am backing up my
opinion, however I respect that yours differs, and that opposite
experiences are possible due to various circumstances. Everyone
is different, and we each choose our own tools to do the job at
hand.
I don't think it is necessary for you to respond to this, but if
you wish to, please - lets take it to personal mail and keep it
out of linux-kernel.
TTYL
-- Mike A. Harris - Computer Consultant - Linux advocateLinux software galore: http://freshmeat.net
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