compiling flite on fedora core 2

[Stephen Clower]

Nick,
  I installed all of FC1 onto my computer. Next, I edited my /etc/yum.conf file to point to the FC2 update packages by changing the instances of "$releasever" to "2." I also inserted the following line into the main portion of the file:
exclude kernel* *debuginfo*
This tells yum not to download any of the normal kernel images so you can manually install a new one later. Next, I ran "yum -y upgrade" to upgrade all of the packages save the kernel. This took a fairly long time, about four hours on my connection. Of course, changing your base and update URL's to a local Fedora mirror will speed things up considerably. After everything was installed, I mounted the first Fedora 2 installation disk and installed the 2.6.5 kernel for my hardware. The grub boot loader was automatically updated with the change, but you'll have to modify the default bootable image. The order on my computer went something like this:
0 = FC2 with 2.6.5 kernel
1 = FC2 with 2.4.222H kernel
2 = Windows 2000 Pro
My default line was set to 1, so hitting Enter at boot time would load the 2.4.222H kernel. I changed default to 0, so hitting Enter loaded 2.6.5 instead. You could always hit the up-arrow first, but I was lazy and wanted to minimize my boot keystrokes.
  There are a few things that disapointed me with this release. First, I was only able to get Alsa running when I logged in as root and modprobed my sound card. Changing the device permissions didn't seem to make any sort of difference, and putting the Alsa startup sequences in any of the startup scripts didn't get it starting. Furthermore, some modules such as APM support are not included with the 2.6.5 kernel as they were with the 2.4.22 one, so new Linux users upgrading to FC2 on a laptop will undoubtedly find that to be a bit annoying. Of course, everyone has to learn how to compile a kernel eventually, but FC2 is daunting enough to the inexperienced Linux nerd as it is. If you really like Fedora Core, then go ahead and upgrade. If other people wish to upgrade to version 2 from version 1 and are not able to use the installation CD's, I'd recommend only doing this if you know exactly what you're doing. The steps I described above worked for me on my own machine, but so far as I know this is not officially supported or recommended by the Fedora team. Do this at your own risk. To those that want to upgrade and feel brave enough, good luck.
Regards
Steve

Stephen Clower, that guy from the south.
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