[PLUG] Upgrading from Red Hat 7.3 to ...

[Bill Barry]

On Fri, Dec 12, 2003 at 10:48:48PM -0800, Evan Heidtmann wrote:
> Hello everyone.
> 
> I am currently running Red Hat Linux 7.3 on my server.  With the 
> discontinuation of support from Red Hat, I have been looking at the 
> alternatives.
> 
> I tried Gentoo, but my hardware (PII/233Mhz, 96MB RAM) is far too weak 
> for all that compiling.  Debian looks promising and so does Fedora.  At 
> this point, I am looking to the list for recommendations.
> 
> I am very interested in an upgrade path that will be the least 
> troublesome and therefore produce the least downtime.  It would also be 
> _very_ convenient to be able to keep my current config files.
> 
> These reasons point towards Fedora, but if Debian offers significant 
> advantages, I might be convinced to switch.  In that case, what is the 
> best way to go about it?

I did a 7.3-> Fedora upgrade on a machine and am happy with the results.
There was one problem in the upgrade with the printing system. Fedora
no longer comes with the lprng printing system, it uses cups. An application
that I had written needed slight modification to work with cups.

I have machines with Debian, Gentoo and now Fedora and don't see any
really significant advantages of one over the other. Deep down they
are mostly the same.

If you want the smoothest upgrade I recommend Fedora. If you
want to spend some time and learn another system Debian would 
be a good one to try.

Bill Barry