Fitting Fedora 29... For not all hats are the same

Yesterday, I wrote a post on how my Fedora 27 reached EOL and I had to upgrade to Fedora 29.  So, I finished the download of the Fedora 29 KDE spin and, after creating a USB live medium, I started the installation expecting two main problems as a result:

1.  A messed-up GRUB2
2.  A fierce battle to get the printer working.  Or the scanner.  Or both, as I have a multifunction Epson XP 231 printer.


I have to say that this time the installer made me confused, in particular regarding the partitioning.  I wanted to keep my home partition and it took me a while to figure out how anaconda does it, but I eventually managed.

The installation was quick after that and I rebooted.

Sure enough, I had problems with GRUB2.  My OpenMandriva-controlled GRUB2 started, but when I selected Fedora, it tried to locate my old Fedora 27 and obviously could not boot.  "No problem," I thought.  "I simply boot OpenMandriva, refresh the GRUB2 configuration, and then boot Fedora."

But my expectation was met: Fedora messed up OpenMandriva and it performed two checks that lasted 1:30 minute each...

After the delay, I used GRUB customizer and could boot Fedora 29  KDE.  The OS was responsive and my personal settings were kept (since I used my old home partition), but one needs to do several things before the fresh install of Fedora becomes completely functional.   Otherwise, you get something very promising, but somehow weird, like Indiana Jones using a top hat.


This post by Mehedi Hasan helped me a lot.  I first installed the updates with su, my root password and then dnf upgrade.  That took a while because there were many packages.


Next, I enabled the RPM Fusion repos.  Again, after su and the root password, I pasted this text on the terminal:

dnf install --nogpgcheck http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-29.noarch.rpm
dnf install --nogpgcheck http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-29.noarch.rpm

Next, I installed essential programs:
dnf install vlc
dnf install libreoffice
dnf install wine
dnf install steam
dnf install gimp

The real challenge was to enable the printer and the scanner, as I had predicted.  The printer driver installed without any problem, but I could not enable the printer because of lack of privileges.  I solved that granting my user administration privileges.

The old Fedora 27 drivers for the scanner complained about missing dependencies, so I had to get this iscan bundle.  Then, I remembered that Megatotoro had a post on how to enable the scanner here.  That did the trick.  Thanks, brother!!!


With that, Fedora 29 KDE was in a perfect state for me. Yay!

Last minute shopping... I need a new Fedora!

Linux has become really stable.  I remember that, when I migrated, I waited for the two yearly Mandriva releases.  Then, it was for the yearly releases of Mageia and OpenMandriva. But releases have been slowing down.  While Mageia and my daughter had pretty much the same age at first, my child will be 9 this year and Mageia is not 7 yet.

PCLinuxOS has to be updated frequently and PicarOS Diego and Elive are special.  I once updated PicarOS and the result was a major disaster: it became a weird Minino spin.  Elive took more than 5 years to move from 2 to 3, but it's awesome.

And then, there's Fedora.

I installed Fedora 25 as an experiment and upgraded to 26 and 27.  But then I became lazy and lost track of its development because, once that everything worked the way I needed, the thought of installing the new distro releases went to the back on my brain.

However, today I tried to upgrade the Fedora packages and all I got was a message saying that my distro was up-to-date, which I immediately suspected because Fedora releases upgrades quite frequently, just as PCLOS.

So, I went online and read that Fedora 27 had reached EOL on November 30, 2018... Three months ago!

It goes without saying that I have to download the ISO and install it before the start of the new semester.  I am on it, getting the Fedora 29 KDE spin.  Darn, I feel like that client that rushes into the store in the very last minute before it closes! 

Well, at least I know that Fedora is changing the logo :P

The Banner of Death!

Google+ greeted me with this banner.

I guess that says a lot about how all the campaigns to preserve the social network fared...