Upgrading from Fedora 41 to Fedora 42
If someone were to ask me which Linux distro has provided the best desktop experience, I wouldn't hesitate to answer: Fedora Workstation 41. Seriously, Fedora 41 has been a real pleasure to use - it's been as close to perfect as I could have hoped for.
That said, I think it’s understandable that I felt a bit nervous or cautious about upgrading to Fedora 42. These nervy feelings were intensified by the fact that I'm currently in the middle of working on a large project and I cannot afford any downtime to fix any system issues caused by a borked upgrade.
I did it anyway.
Thankfully, as with the upgrade from 40 to 41, the process was straightforward and trouble free, as I mentioned in a status update:
Daily driver (Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 3) upgraded to Fedora 42. No issues to speak of. I love that I can do a release upgrade and then just get on with my day. Perfect.
The upgrade process
The upgrade process is fairly straightforward and when performed via a terminal, it consists of 3 commands.
Step 1 - Update system and reboot
Issue the following command:
sudo dnf --refresh upgrade && sudo reboot
Step 2 - Fetch packages for new release
Issue the following command:
sudo dnf system-upgrade download --releasever=42
Step 3 - Reboot and install the new packages
Issue the command:
sudo dnf5 offline reboot
Done.
I'm hoping Fedora 42 proves to be as good as its predecessor.
Comments
Chris R
May 27, 2025, 12:27
Hey Philip,
Have you considered using an Atomic version of Fedora? You mentioned in a previous post that most of your software is installed via Flatpaks, so it may be a good choice for you. Fedora Atomic desktops also come with Toolbox installed, so you can set up containerised development environments pretty easily.
Best of all, if an update borks your system, it only takes a few minutes to temporarily boot into the older version from the boot menu or permanently rollback using the
rpm-ostree rollback. If you're feeling adventurous you can even rebase to use a completely different desktop environment withrpm-ostree rebasewithout losing your files, apps and containers.Philip Newborough
May 27, 2025, 16:02
Hey Chris 😊
I have considered it, but that's as far as I've got. I'm definitely going to give it a try at some point, but it's not super high on my agenda at the moment.