How To Upgrade From Fedora 14 To Fedora 15 (Desktop & Server)

This article describes how you can upgrade your Fedora 14 system to Fedora 15. The upgrade procedure works for both desktop and server installations.

I do not issue any guarantee that this will work for you!

The commands in this article must be executed with root privileges. Open a terminal (on a Fedora 14 desktop, go to Applications > System Tools > Terminal) and log in as root, or if you log in with a regular user, type

su

to become root.

Please make sure that the system that you want to upgrade has more than 600 MB of RAM - otherwise the system might hang when it tries to reboot with the following message (leaving you with an unusable system):

Trying to unpack rootfs image as initramfs...

First we must upgrade the rpm package:

yum update rpm

Then we install the latest updates:

yum -y update

Next we clean the yum cache:

yum clean all

If you notice that a new kernel got installed during yum -y update, you should reboot the system now:

reboot

(After the reboot, log in as root again, either directly or with the help of

su

)

Now we come to the upgrade process. We can do this with preupgrade (preupgrade will also take care of your RPMFusion packages).

Install preupgrade...

yum install preupgrade

... and call it like this:

preupgrade

The preupgrade wizard will then start on your desktop. Select Fedora 15 (Lovelock). Afterwards the system is being prepared for the upgrade.

At the end, click on the Reboot Now button.

During the reboot, the upgrade is being performed. This can take quite a long time, so please be patient.

Afterwards, you can log into your new Fedora 15 desktop.

First we must upgrade the rpm package:

yum update rpm

Then we install the latest updates:

yum -y update

Next we clean the yum cache:

yum clean all

If you notice that a new kernel got installed during yum -y update, you should reboot the system now:

reboot

(After the reboot, log in as root again, either directly or with the help of

su

)

Now we come to the upgrade process. We can do this with preupgrade.

Install preupgrade...

yum install preupgrade

... and call it like this:

preupgrade-cli

It will show you a list of releases that you can upgrade to. If all goes well, it should show something like Fedora 15 (Lovelock) in the list:

[root@server1 ~]# preupgrade-cli
Loaded plugins: blacklist, langpacks, whiteout
No plugin match for: rpm-warm-cache
No plugin match for: remove-with-leaves
No plugin match for: auto-update-debuginfo
Adding en_US to language list
Loaded plugins: langpacks, presto, refresh-packagekit
Adding en_US to language list
please give a release to try to pre-upgrade to
valid entries include:
"Fedora 15 (Lovelock)"
[root@server1 ~]#

To upgrade, append the release string to the preupgrade-cli command:

preupgrade-cli "Fedora 15 (Lovelock)"

Preupgrade will also take care of your RPMFusion packages, so all you have to do after preupgrade has finished is to reboot:

reboot

During the reboot, the upgrade is being performed. This can take quite a long time, so please be patient. Afterwards, you can log into your new Fedora 15 server.

The Perfect Desktop - Ubuntu Studio 11.04

This tutorial shows how you can set up an Ubuntu Studio 11.04 desktop that is a full-fledged replacement for a Windows desktop, i.e. that has all the software that people need to do the things they do on their Windows desktops. The advantages are clear: you get a secure system without DRM restrictions that works even on old hardware, and the best thing is: all software comes free of charge.

I want to say first that this is not the only way of setting up such a system. There are many ways of achieving this goal but this is the way I take. I do not issue any guarantee that this will work for you!

To fully replace a Windows desktop, I want the Ubuntu Studio desktop to have the following software installed:

The GIMP - free software replacement for Adobe Photoshop Shotwell Photo Manager - full-featured personal photo management application for the GNOME desktopGoogle Picasa - application for organizing and editing digital photosFirefoxOperaChromium - Google's open-source browser Flash Player 10 FileZilla - multithreaded FTP client Thunderbird - email and news clientEvolution - combines e-mail, calendar, address book, and task list management functionsaMule - P2P file sharing applicationTransmission BitTorrent Client - Bittorrent client Vuze - Java Bittorrent client Empathy IM Client - multi-platform instant messaging clientSkypeGoogle EarthXchat IRC - IRC client Gwibber Social Client - open-source microblogging client (Twitter, Facebook, etc.)LibreOffice Writer - replacement for Microsoft Word LibreOffice Calc - replacement for Microsoft Excel Adobe ReaderGnuCash - double-entry book-keeping personal finance system, similar to Quicken Scribus - open source desktop publishing (DTP) applicationAmarok - audio player Audacity - free, open source, cross platform digital audio editorBanshee - audio player, can encode/decode various formats and synchronize music with Apple iPods MPlayer - media player (video/audio), supports WMA Rhythmbox Music Player - audio player, similar to Apple's iTunes, with support for iPods gtkPod - software similar to Apple's iTunes, supports iPod, iPod nano, iPod shuffle, iPod photo, and iPod miniXMMS - audio player similar to Winampdvd::rip - full featured DVD copy programKino - free digital video editorSound Juicer CD Extractor - CD ripping tool, supports various audio codecsVLC Media Player - media player (video/audio)RealPlayer - media player (available for i386 systems only)Totem - media player (video/audio)Xine - media player, supports various formats; can play DVDs Brasero - CD/DVD burning program K3B - CD/DVD burning programMultimedia CodecsKompoZer - WYSIWYG HTML editor, similar to Macromedia Dreamweaver, but not as feature-rich (yet)Bluefish - text editor, suitable for many programming and markup languagesQuanta Plus - web development environment, including a WYSIWYG editorVirtualBox OSE- lets you run your old Windows desktop as a virtual machine under your Linux desktop, so you don't have to entirely abandon Windows TrueType fontsJavaRead-/Write support for NTFS partitions

Lots of our desired applications are available in the Ubuntu repositories, and some of these applications have been contributed by the Ubuntu community.

As you might have noticed, a few applications are redundant, for example there are two CD/DVD burning applications in my list (Brasero, K3B). If you know which one you like best, you obviously don't need to install the other applications, however if you like choice, then of course you can install both. The same goes for music players like Amarok, Banshee, Rhythmbox, XMMS or browsers (Firefox, Opera, Chromium).

I will use the username falko in this tutorial. Please replace it with your own username.

The installation of the base system is easy as 1-2-3 because the Ubuntu Studio installer doesn't offer a lot of options to choose from, so you cannot go wrong.

Download the Ubuntu Studio iso image from http://ubuntustudio.org/downloads, burn it onto a DVD, and boot your computer from it. Select your language:

Then select Install Ubuntu Studio:

Choose your language again (?):

Then select your location:

If you've selected an uncommon combination of language and location (like English as the language and Germany as the location, as in my case), the installer might tell you that there is no locale defined for this combination; in this case you have to select the locale manually. I select en_US.UTF-8 here:

Choose a keyboard layout (you will be asked to press a few keys, and the installer will try to detect your keyboard layout based on the keys you pressed):

The installer checks the installation CD, your hardware, and configures the network with DHCP if there is a DHCP server in the network:

You can accept the default hostname or specify your own one:

Please check if the installer detected your time zone correctly. If so, select Yes, otherwise No:

Now you have to partition your hard disk. For simplicity's sake I will create one big partition (with the mount point /) and a little swap partition so I select Guided - use entire disk (of course, the partitioning is totally up to you - if you like, you can create more than just one big partition, and you can also use LVM):

Select the disk that you want to partition:

When you're finished, hit Yes when you're asked Write the changes to disks?:

Afterwards, your new partitions are being created and formatted.

The Perfect Desktop - Ubuntu Studio 11.04 - Page 2

The Perfect Desktop - Kubuntu 11.04

This tutorial shows how you can set up a Kubuntu 11.04 desktop that is a full-fledged replacement for a Windows desktop, i.e. that has all the software that people need to do the things they do on their Windows desktops. The advantages are clear: you get a secure system without DRM restrictions that works even on old hardware, and the best thing is: all software comes free of charge. Kubuntu 11.04 is derived from Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal) and uses the KDE desktop instead of the GNOME desktop.

I want to say first that this is not the only way of setting up such a system. There are many ways of achieving this goal but this is the way I take. I do not issue any guarantee that this will work for you!

To fully replace a Windows desktop, I want the Kubuntu desktop to have the following software installed:

The GIMP - free software replacement for Adobe Photoshop Shotwell Photo Manager - full-featured personal photo management applicationGoogle Picasa - application for organizing and editing digital photosFirefoxOperaChromium - Google's open-source browser Flash Player 10 FileZilla - multithreaded FTP client Thunderbird - email and news clientEvolution - combines e-mail, calendar, address book, and task list management functionsaMule - P2P file sharing applicationKTorrent - Bittorrent client Vuze - Java Bittorrent client Kopete - multi-platform instant messaging clientSkypeGoogle EarthQuassel IRC - IRC client Gwibber Social Client - open-source microblogging client (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) LibreOffice Writer - replacement for Microsoft Word LibreOffice Calc - replacement for Microsoft Excel Adobe ReaderGnuCash - double-entry book-keeping personal finance system, similar to Quicken Scribus - open source desktop publishing (DTP) applicationAmarok - audio player Audacity - free, open source, cross platform digital audio editorBanshee - audio player, can encode/decode various formats and synchronize music with Apple iPods MPlayer - media player (video/audio), supports WMA Rhythmbox Music Player - audio player, similar to Apple's iTunes, with support for iPods gtkPod - software similar to Apple's iTunes, supports iPod, iPod nano, iPod shuffle, iPod photo, and iPod miniXMMS - audio player similar to Winampdvd::rip - full featured DVD copy programKino - free digital video editorSound Juicer CD Extractor - CD ripping tool, supports various audio codecsVLC Media Player - media player (video/audio)RealPlayer - media player (available for i386 systems only)Totem - media player (video/audio)Xine - media player, supports various formats; can play DVDs Brasero - CD/DVD burning program K3B - CD/DVD burning programMultimedia CodecsKompoZer - WYSIWYG HTML editor, similar to Macromedia Dreamweaver, but not as feature-rich (yet)Bluefish - text editor, suitable for many programming and markup languagesQuanta Plus - web development environment, including a WYSIWYG editorVirtualBox OSE - lets you run your old Windows desktop as a virtual machine under your Linux desktop, so you don't have to entirely abandon Windows TrueType fontsJavaRead-/Write support for NTFS partitions

Lots of our desired applications are available in the Ubuntu repositories, and some of these applications have been contributed by the Ubuntu community.

As you might have noticed, a few applications are redundant, for example there are two CD/DVD burning applications in my list (Brasero, K3B). If you know which one you like best, you obviously don't need to install the other applications, however if you like choice, then of course you can install both. The same goes for music players like Amarok, Banshee, Rhythmbox, XMMS or browsers (Firefox, Opera, Chromium).

I will use the username falko in this tutorial. Please replace it with your own username.

The installation of the base system is easy as 1-2-3 because the Kubuntu installer doesn't offer a lot of options to choose from, so you cannot go wrong.

Download the Kubuntu 11.04 Desktop iso image from http://www.kubuntu.org/getkubuntu (this link offers torrent downloads only; if you want to download the iso image directly, you can use one of the mirrors listed on https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+cdmirrors), burn it onto a CD, and boot your computer from it. Select Start Kubuntu:

The system boots:

Select your language and click on the Install Kubuntu button to start the installation:

On the next screen you see a few requirements for the Kubuntu 11.04 installation (the system should have at least 3.9GB available drive space, should be plugged into a power source (to make sure that the system doesn't shut down during installation because of an empty battery), and should be connected to the Internet). Please check the Download updates while installing and Install this third-party software (this will install the software necessary to process Flash, MP3, and other media files) checkboxes and click on Forward:

Now we come to the partitioning of our hard disk. Usually Guided - use entire disk is a good choice, unless you need custom partitions and know what you're doing. Guided - use entire disk will create one big / partition for us:

Then choose your time zone:

Change the keyboard layout, if necessary:

Type in your real name, your desired username along with a password, and click on Forward:

Afterwards, Kubuntu is being installed. This can take a few minutes, so be patient:

After the installation, you will be asked to reboot the system. Click on Restart Now:

At the end of the shutdown process, you are asked to remove the Kubuntu installation CD from the CD drive. Please do this now and press ENTER:

Your new Kubuntu system starts. Log in to the desktop with the username and password you provided during the installation:

This is how your new desktop looks:

Now the base system is ready to be used.

The Perfect Desktop - Kubuntu 11.04 - Page 2