How to Upgrade Fedora Workstation to a New Release

Last Updated: December 23rd, 2022 Guoan Xiao (Admin)

This quick tutorial will show you how to upgade Fedora Workstation from command line. It works for every Fedora release. Everytime a new version of Fedora is released, you can use the method in this article to upgrade your Fedora system.

If you aren’t currently using Fedora, but want to try it out, you can download it from https://torrents.fedoraproject.org/ with a BitTorrent program.

Upgrade Fedora Workstation

First upgrade exiting software on Fedora by running the following command in terminal.

sudo dnf upgrade --refresh

Install the system upgrade dnf plugin.

sudo dnf install dnf-plugin-system-upgrade

Download packages from the new release.

sudo dnf system-upgrade download --releasever=36

In the above command, the new release is Fedora 36. If you upgrade to Fedora 37 in the future, simply replace 36 with 37.

sudo dnf system-upgrade download --releasever=37

Once the above command is successfully executed, reboot into the upgrade process.

sudo dnf system-upgrade reboot

Select the first boot option.

upgrade fedora 23 to fedora 24

Now wait for the upgrade process to finish.

upgrade fedora 23 workstation to fedora 24

It will automatically reboot once the upgrade is complete. Select the first Fedora 24 kernel in Grub boot menu.

upgrade to fedora 24

Run the following command to check the version of Fedora.

cat /etc/redhat-release

or for a detailed description:

cat /etc/*-release

Output

Fedora release 36 (Thirty Six)
NAME="Fedora Linux"
VERSION="36 (Workstation Edition)"
ID=fedora
VERSION_ID=36
VERSION_CODENAME=""
PLATFORM_ID="platform:f36"
PRETTY_NAME="Fedora Linux 36 (Workstation Edition)"
ANSI_COLOR="0;38;2;60;110;180"
LOGO=fedora-logo-icon
CPE_NAME="cpe:/o:fedoraproject:fedora:36"
HOME_URL="https://fedoraproject.org/"
DOCUMENTATION_URL="https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora/f36/system-administrators-guide/"
SUPPORT_URL="https://ask.fedoraproject.org/"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugzilla.redhat.com/"
REDHAT_BUGZILLA_PRODUCT="Fedora"
REDHAT_BUGZILLA_PRODUCT_VERSION=36
REDHAT_SUPPORT_PRODUCT="Fedora"
REDHAT_SUPPORT_PRODUCT_VERSION=36
PRIVACY_POLICY_URL="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Legal:PrivacyPolicy"
VARIANT="Workstation Edition"
VARIANT_ID=workstation
Fedora release 36 (Thirty Six)
Fedora release 36 (Thirty Six)

RAM Disk

If you have followed my RAM disk tutorial, you might wonder if mounting the /var/cache/dnf/ directory in RAM will prevent Fedora from upgrading to a new release, because Fedora requires reboot to install system upgrade packages. The answer is No. It won’t prevent system upgrades, as Fedora stores system upgrade pacakges under a different directory /var/lib/dnf/system-upgrade/.

Wrapping Up

Questions or suggestions are always welcome. If you found this post useful, 🙂 please share it with your friends on social media! Stay tuned for more Linux tutorials.

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