Over the past two weeks, I have upgraded two computers to Fedora 27 (from Fedora 25, having skipped Fedora 26 and enjoyed roughly a year’s worth of Fedora goodness).
The two computers are:
- Dell desktop (main system): Intel® Core™ i5-4460 CPU @ 3.20GHz — no Hyperthreading, 1 TB 7200 HD, 8gigs memory; screen upgraded separately to an Acer widescreen, and old screen relegated to a “new to me” computer setup as a node on the World Community Grid.
- Acer laptop (secondary system): Intel® Core™ i7-5500U CPU @ 2.40GHz (Hyperthreaded), now 500gig SSD HD, 8 gigs memory.
Two of the equipment upgrades are the screen on the desktop, which is now a used Acer widescreen, and the laptop’s 5200RPM 1TB drive was upgraded to a 500gig SSD. The laptop went from interminably slow to incredibly fast! The comment from my brother: “SSD’s are one of the few things that actually lives up to the hype.” In my experience — under linux, anyway. Under a corporate controlled windows box? Well I’d say that my work computer, with an SSD, needs the SSD speed just not to be unusable!
The upgrades were incredibly easy this time, and fast, the new SSD installed on the laptop probably being the big factor. In fact, I was able to do the basic install in about 15 minutes, and the rest of my list (made for Fedora 23, but the basic list is still valid) was easy to complete while on a business trip in the motel room during off hours. In fact, one of the things that took a couple of days to realize: Fedora has had difficulty with the UEFI on this machine in the past — it would install, and then not work, and I’d have to reinstall under legacy BIOS. Note that I have a BIOS password, so perhaps in the past I just figured out how to make it persistent. As for restoring the data, once home, I managed to easily copy all my data files from my desktop overnight.
As for the desktop, having just gone through the process a couple of days earlier with my laptop, I was able to easily update, and then re-transfer my data from the laptop overnight, as well as update my data backup on my home server.
The “big” thing this time? The hardware upgrades. The almost un-noticeable thing this time? The installs, which were incredibly easy, quick, routine, and almost easily forgotten. Sheesh, I’ve lost track of how many installs I’ve done over the years …