Several weeks ago I finally got around to upgrading my Linux distribution on my Dell Latitude D505. Since I was issued this laptop at work a couple of years ago I have been running Fedora Core 3 (the latest and greatest at the time). Since FC3 is really pretty old almost nobody packages modern RPMs for Open Office, Firefox or much of anything anymore. Bottom line, I was WAY overdue for an upgrade.

I backed my personal files and applications to my 100GB Seagate external drive and dropped in FC5. Other than the standard “yum update” stuff all I did was point yum to a few 3rd party repositories so I could update gstreamer plugins for MP3 playback, install a working MPlayer plugin for Firefox and install the ipw2200 firmware to get my wireless working. Otherwise everything else pretty much just worked. I took a queue from my coworker Bryan and started using alternatives to manage multiple JVMs, ant and a few other Java related tools. A few websites that helped out:

http://stanton-finley.net/fedora_core_5_installation_notes.html

http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/html_single/Fedora-Multimedia-Installation-HOWTO/

I think this was the first time on a Linux machine I ever had hibernate to disk working with absolutely no configuration. Fedora has come a long way.