Leaping from F18 -> F21

[Max Pyziur]

Greetings,

I decided to begin making the leap from F18 to F21. My reluctance in 
upgrading with each new release was due to all of the problems that were 
reported with upgrades, and not wanting to go through a dependency upgrade 
ordeal.

Now with F18 firmly EOL'd and enough packages showing their age and 
demanding upgrades, I've begun making the switch.

I have three machines that run Fedora: two laptops, one of which is an 
i686 and the other a dual-core, and a desktop.

I've started w/ the i686, the least used, and essentially a backup. The 
strategy is to simply leave the /home partition alone, and to do a fresh 
install, reformating the other partitions. (I used the Fedora 21 
Workstation Live i686 disc). Having a list of those RPMs that were 
installed under F18, I'll work my way back to something that I was using 
before.

I did that, but when the machine responded and rebooted, and then I tried 
to login through the GUI to a gnome desktop, the result was unusable.

No problem: <ctrl+alt>+F2 and I have a character-based screen, and I can 
log in.

>From there, I did a
yum groupinstall "Xfce Desktop"

and then rebooted, selected Xfce as my desktop, login, and I have the 
beginnings of a functioning gui-based system.

However, my Gnome problem remains: there is no provision in F21-i686 for a
yum groupinstall "GNOME Desktop" so that I have a functioning Gnome or 
Gnome-Classic desktop (there is one for "MATE Desktop," btw).

Would anyone have advice on how to install all of the remaining necessary 
pieces for a functioning F21 i686 Gnome Desktop?

Much thanks,

Max Pyziur
pyz at brama.com