Fedora 12, upgrade or fresh-install?
Constantine, Fedora 12 is going to be out soon. I am really excited and I bet every linuxer will be equally excited and looking forward to try it out. Most of the you will be in a dilemma, whether to do an upgrade or a fresh-install? what's best for my system? In this article I will give you some tips and methods which will help you answer such questions.
Don't you just love your system after an upgrade or a re-install? The whole looks and feel has changed, sometimes things that were not working on your previous installation start working , its amazing. Even though you might not agree with me but I believe that the decision that you take at this point, if right, makes you love your new system even more.
Here are some points that you should know before starting:
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today's howtos
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Flip a coin.
First I back up my important data and try the upgrade option. If for any reason things go tits up then I do a fresh-install and restore my backed up data.
Upgrade should be fine
pacman -Syu
Pacman wacka wacka
What is tis pacman stuff?
re: pacman
yeah, ain't that arch? fedora is yummy.
Full install gives all the goodies
I doubt an upgrade would allow you to change your /boot to Ext4, while a new install will allow you to run the /boot on Ext4 and install Grub2 or whatever so it can boot from Ext4 (something missing until this Oct '09 + distribution versions).
grub2
Oh crap another grub2 distro release? pffffffft
Not grub2
No, Fedora does not use grub2. It uses grub.
re: grub2
one reputable online site said openSUSE used grub2 too, but they didn't. I think folks are getting confused with all the big distro releases so close together.
Fresh install FTW
Real unix/Linux users keep /home on a separate partition and never format it, this way a fresh install is faster than an upgrade.
Just keep note of the config files you edited in the past - shoudn't be more than two or three these days, Linux doesn't need much tweaking anymore - and apply the same changes to the new installation, if still necessary.
Real unix/Linux users also use xfs and not ext4, because xfs is just as efficient but has the advantage of being a proven workhorse: It's been on high-end unix workstations for decades, working through entire projects (from CAD engineering to complex simulations) without a reboot.
wow.
wow, exclude people much? I use ext4, apparently I'm not a 'real unix/Linux user' now? last I checked, Linus uses ext4 too...
Re: wow.
It was more like banter actually, I do make the choices I expressed but far from me the intention of excluding anybody, let alone AdamW and Linus =:O
re: ext4
Is it just me or is ext4 slow? I know it must just be me cause wasn't speed one of its touted features? But every time I install on ext4, the system seems very slow. I tend to do better with ext3. Weird huh?
ext3 vs ext4
Me too! Whats up with that??
ext4 performance
Phoronix comprehensive filesystems benchmark:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ext4_benchmarks&num=1
It shows that the perceived speed of each filesystem depends on what you do with your computer, because the top contenders - ext3/4 and xfs - are very close to each other, each excelling at different tasks.
I would add though that xfs has an online defrag utility that's far more full featured than e4defrag, so it remains to see how the comparison would look like after one year of usage and doing the correct maintenance to the fs.
Unix filesystem fragmentation is low but it does exist, and if you move around multimedia files day in and day out like in the typical home desktop usage, its effects can be noticed IMO.
BTRFS will catch up with and surpass xfs in speed AND features, with real online defragmentation too; ext4 is an incremental update that doesn't dramatically change the game.