A couple of questions:
I know now that I should use RPMs intead of .targz files to install so YUM can keep track of the installations.
It's rpm that keeps track of installations; yum takes care of dependencies at install-time but uses rpm to actually do the installation, and the result is no different to having installed the rpms manually using rpm.
If I download an RPM and install without using YUM, will it be seen by YUM, APT, etc?
Yes, because it's rpm that maintains the database of what's installed.
I have installed FC2 on a "Practice" machine and would like to start from scratch again. Should I reinstall FC2 or wait for FC3?
It depends if you're prepared to wait until November 8th + however long it takes you to download the files. You could reinstall FC2 now and then upgrade to FC3 later, which might be a good compromise.
Would I be able to use FC2 RPMs on FC3?
Not all of them. It would depend on the dependencies of the FC2 RPMs you were interested in. For example, any FC2 RPM that is built using libcurl will not work on FC3 because FC3 will have a later, incompatible version of libcurl. Packages that are largely self-contained and don't have external library dependencies will probably work OK on FC3.
Paul.
