OK, screw 32-bit PAE, I'm going to switch to 64-bit Linux. (For reasons left as a teaser to read the upcoming newsletter...)
I'm going to attempt an in-place upgrade F19 to F20, similar to what is outlined here: http://archive09.linux.com/feature/123800
It sounds do-able. I'm more than used to doing wacky pseudo-supported upgrade procedures; I'm running many boxes that have been upgraded from Fedora 3 all the way through to F19 via yum (headless, via network) only; and those boxes have also been hw upgraded a few times each! Try that with Windows (and the end result is clean and trim, not bloated)!
I do have a couple of questions I can't seem to find answers to:
1. Will /usr/local/bin stuff I've compiled myself (not too much), which are obviously 32-bit binaries, run on my new 64 system?
2. If #1 requires 32-bit libraries, can Fedora 64-bit have both 32 and 64 libraries installed?
3. Will I lose flash?
4. How many programs am I running that (as per link above) use binary arch-dependent data files? The article mentions db files (I use only MySQL/Maria), but I don't mind doing a full text dump/restore. But what else might use them? I'm a bit scared that systemd's new journal logs might also cause problems. What else? (Good thing UNIX is so text-based.)
Why do I not want to do a wipe/reinstall? a) I'm good at getting the wacky option to work, generally. b) I've configured the !*%@@ out of my box and to resetup everything to the way I have it would take way more than the 1 day I am guessing the upgrade method will take. c) #b includes the bazillion daemons I run (and would require reconfig / data file migration)
Thanks guys.