What are the limitations of preupgrade

[Gordon Messmer]

On 11/03/2012 10:07 PM, Bill Davidsen wrote:
> The bottom line appears to be 13->15->17, at most two versions at a
> time.

I don't know of any reason you can't go from 13->16.  Going directly to 
17 is only problematic because of the /usr merge, since anaconda needs 
to handle that.

> And it's going to be really ugly, because GNOME went away, or at
> any rate the name was jacked up and something utterly different put in,
> so I will have to migrate users to the nearest thing, XFCE.

The nearest thing is probably Cinnamon, which is available in F17. 
Cinnamon is an alternative GNOME shell, which mostly resembles GNOME 2. 
  That said, I don't think there's anything specifically wrong with the 
GNOME Shell.  My mom uses it.  A number of my friends use it.  I use it. 
  Only a few people that I know specifically don't like it.

> I think the easy way is to drop in an SSD for root and clean install,
> then recustomize and mount the pieces. Maybe plug in a spare 8TB RAID on
> the eSATA and take another backup, I have two remote backups, but
> restoring over Gbit network will take way too long if I must.

Yes, clean installs are going to be the most reliable installation 
method, and backups are always recommended.

> Thanks for the pointers, it would appear that changing the network
> device names and putting something totally different in while still
> calling it GNOME is going to make the upgrade, or any automated upgrade
> past the changes, challenging on anything more than a simple desktop.

The network device name is also optional.  If you boot with the kernel 
arg "biosdevname=0", you won't get that behavior.