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Some issues may come up during your upgrade. The majority of problems that arise in upgrading a Linux release involves the third-party software. Since the Linux distribution can only really know about the software it provides, often third-party software can be ignored. However, when the third-party software replaces some distribution-provided software, problems can arise. The biggest example of this is Ximian Desktop software.
Ximian desktop software is designed to be complete from Ximian. Because of this, it replaces many core components to GNOME that came with your Red Hat Linux system. This means that the predetermined dependency tree is no longer valid, and upgrades tend to break or ignore the entire GNOME tree, leaving you with a nonworking desktop environment. The following excerpt from the Fedora Core 1 release notes comments on this problem:
There have been issues observed when upgrading Red Hat Linux 7.<x>, 8.0, 9 and Fedora Core 1 systems running Ximian GNOME. The issue is caused by version overlap between the official Red Hat Linux RPMs (or the ones from the Fedora Project) and the Ximian RPMs. This configuration is not supported. You have several choices in resolving this issue:
You may remove Ximian GNOME from your system prior to upgrading to Fedora Core.
You may upgrade your system, and then immediately reinstall Ximian GNOME.
You may upgrade your system, and then immediately remove all remaining Ximian RPMs, replacing them with the corresponding Fedora Core RPMs.
You must resolve the version overlap using one of the above choices. Failure to do so will result in an unstable GNOME configuration.
The same strategy applies to most other third-party software.
The yum and apt upgrade process has a unique ability to handle third-party software issues. yum and apt can be configured to provide updates for that software, so your third-party software is updated along with your Red Hat base.
A quick way to determine which non-Red Hat packages are on your system is to run the following command:
# /bin/rpm -qa -queryformat "%{NAME}-%{VERSI0N}-
%{RELEASE} Vendor: %{VENDOR)\ n"| grep -v "Red Hat, Inc."
This will query all your RPMs, with an output format of the name-version-release, followed by the vendor. You pipe this output into grep, which removes all entries containing Red Hat, Inc., leaving the non-Red Hat or third-party packages.
Another issue that comes up quite often is that the graphical interface will not work after upgrading. Most often this is because the system was using third-party graphics drivers, like the NVIDIA 3D graphics module. These third-party graphics modules have to be built specifically for the kernel they will run on, but part of the distribution upgrade includes a new kernel. If you are using a third-party graphics module, consult the documentation for the driver on how to upgrade the driver for your new kernel.
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