As it's quiet at work (due to the usual x-mas madness) I decided on Friday to upgrade from Fedora 7 to 8, now this was a bit of a risk for me since I have F7 running perfectly. The fedora release notes advise a clean install over an upgrade, so it's important when you do this to backup /etc so that you can restore anything you need later.

As with all fedora installs it's always two steps forward and one step back, my reasons for upgrading were:

• Evolution 2.12
• Pam & Network Manager Integration and a Network Manager Upgrade
• Compiz included

Unfortunately so far I've had a couple of issues (my steps back),

• Network Manager won't connect to my Hidden SSID
• RHGB doesn't seem to work with encrypted drives
• ... and I haven't had a chance to look into why vpnc crashes when I try to configure it !

It's a shame that beagle still doesn't index my evolution exchange account other than that all looks good, the wallpaper that changes on the time of day is a neat feature; I recommend the following resources to anyone looking to upgrade or use fedora.

• Fedora 8 install guide (aka perfect install)
• Fedora FAQ