>  My old Thinkpad T30 (on which I ran fedup from F18 to F19) is
> beginning to seem like more effort than it's worth, ever if eventual
> success of the effort were a sure thing. Is there a FedDown lurking
> out there somewhere?
>
>  Will an install DVD for F18 (preferably one with both gnome and
> xfce4) let me treat the installation as if it were an upgrade, and
> preserve my data and tweaks?
>

Have not worked with a T30, but on T51, T51e, and T60 I have done limited testing, and found that changing to lightdm makes it work for me.

Got info from user poma

# yum install lightdm
# systemctl enable lightdm --force
# systemctl start lightdm

     OK, I did that, by cutting and pasting; thanks!

     Unfortunately, however, it's over my head.

The issue I've had with older machine that I've tried upgrading to 19 is that if I open a terminal windows from the X windows, the gnome shell starts using 20% to 40% of the cpu. Don't see anything with xfce and opening a terminal window.

     Remember I'm only on it with ssh -- and even if I had a command line on the laptop itself, I wouldn't know how to open a terminal, much less launch the whole GUI.

      I rebooted, hoping for a login screen. No such luck.  I tried typing xfce and enter, and xfce4 and enter, and finally startx, for lack of any other idea; they all failed.

    Incidentally, I follow this list via gmane, where all the webgibberish makes your text completely illegible; please desist. (I'm replying via your direct carbon, using a mailer I have little experience with and no liking for.) In fact, I'm pretty sure the list has a rule against any form of html, anyway.