How To Upgrade To Fedora 35 From Fedora 34 [Desktop And Server]

After months of development, Fedora 35 final version has been released on November 2, 2021. If you're already using Fedora 34, you can now safely upgrade to Fedora 35 desktop or server edition for latest features, performance and stability improvements as described in the following steps.

Prerequisites

Before upgrading to Fedora 35, you need to do a few important tasks.

1. It is strongly RECOMMENDED to Backup your important data before Fedora 35 upgrade. This should be your first step when you want to upgrade a system, regardless of the operating system you use. Make sure you've taken backup of all important files, directories, configuration settings, browser bookmarks, and dot files etc.
2. Fedora 35 upgrade will probably take several minutes to complete. So make sure you've stable Internet connection and uninterrupted power supply.
3. During upgrade, your system will reboot twice to apply certain updates. So ensure that there aren't any important jobs currently running (E.g. Scheduled backups).
4. See the Fedora 35 common bugs and decide if you want to proceed.
5. Upgrades to the very next release (e.g. 34 to 35) as well as upgrades skipping one release (e.g. 33 to 35) are both supported. Upgrades across more than two releases are not supported. Meaning - you can't go from Fedora 32 to 35. It might work sometimes. However, if you encounter with any issues, you won't get any support. In such cases, first upgrade to next release (i.e. 32 to 33) and then try to upgrade from 33 to 35. It is always recommended to upgrade to next release before it reaches EOL.

Well, without further ado, let us start Fedora 35 upgrade task!

Upgrade to Fedora 35 from Fedora 34

We can upgrade to Fedora 35 via GNOME software (GUI) and from command line (CLI). First, we will see the Graphical method using GNOME Software.

If you use Fedora desktop, you can follow the graphical way to upgrade. For Fedora servers, follow the command line way.

Before get started, update your Fedora 34 system:

$ sudo dnf --refresh update

$ sudo dnf upgrade

Reboot your system to apply the updates:

$ sudo reboot

Now, follow any one of the below methods to upgrade Fedora to 35.

1. Upgrade to Fedora 35 using GNOME Software

Step 1: Open your Gnome Software enter and go Updates section. You will see a notification that says - Fedora 35 Now Available. Click the Download button to download Fedora 35 packages.

Step 2: The required packages will be downloaded now. This will take a while depending upon the Internet speed. Once the download is completed, click Install button.

Step 3: A new pop up window will appear and prompt you to click Restart & Install Upgrade. Just click on it to continue.

The system will reboot now. A whole lot of packages will be downloaded and installed on your system. It will take a while. Please be patient!

Upon successful upgrade, you will see that the system is up-to-date under Updates section in Gnome Software.

Congratulations! We've successfully upgraded to Fedora 35.

Step 4: Open a Terminal window and check the installed Fedora version using command:

$ cat /etc/fedora-release
Fedora release 35 (Thirty Five)

To view the detailed output, run:

$ cat /etc/os-release 

Sample output:

NAME="Fedora Linux"
VERSION="35 (Workstation Edition)"
ID=fedora
VERSION_ID=35
VERSION_CODENAME=""
PLATFORM_ID="platform:f35"
PRETTY_NAME="Fedora Linux 35 (Workstation Edition)"
ANSI_COLOR="0;38;2;60;110;180"
LOGO=fedora-logo-icon
CPE_NAME="cpe:/o:fedoraproject:fedora:35"
HOME_URL="https://fedoraproject.org/"
DOCUMENTATION_URL="https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora/f35/system-administrators-guide/"
SUPPORT_URL="https://ask.fedoraproject.org/"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugzilla.redhat.com/"
REDHAT_BUGZILLA_PRODUCT="Fedora"
REDHAT_BUGZILLA_PRODUCT_VERSION=35
REDHAT_SUPPORT_PRODUCT="Fedora"
REDHAT_SUPPORT_PRODUCT_VERSION=35
PRIVACY_POLICY_URL="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Legal:PrivacyPolicy"
VARIANT="Workstation Edition"
VARIANT_ID=workstation

You can also verify the Fedora version under Settings -> About section.

2. Upgrade to Fedora 35 from command line

This method is for those who runs Fedora server edition in their system.

Step 1: Update Fedora 34 server using command:

$ sudo dnf --refresh update

$ sudo dnf upgrade

Reboot your system to apply the updates.

$ sudo reboot

Step 2: Install dnf upgrade plugin by running the following command:

$ sudo dnf install dnf-plugin-system-upgrade

Step 3: Download Fedora 35 packages using command:

$ sudo dnf system-upgrade download --releasever=35

This command will fetch necessary packages and display the summary of what packages are going to be replaced, updated, upgraded, or downgraded. This should several minutes to complete as it downloads a lot of packages.

If some of your packages have unsatisfied dependencies, the upgrade will refuse to continue until you run it again with an extra --allowerasing option.

$ sudo dnf system-upgrade download --releasever=35 --allowerasing

Step 4: Once all packages are downloaded, run the following command to start actual upgrade.

$ sudo dnf system-upgrade reboot

Your system will reboot automatically and upgrade task will start to install all downloaded packages.

Upon successful upgrade, the system reboots into the new Fedora 35 edition.

That's it. Start using your newly upgraded Fedora 35 system.

Fedora post-upgrade tasks

In this section, we will discuss about a few post-upgrade tasks such as changing the hostname, removing unwanted packages, deleting orphaned symlinks, cleaning up old kernels etc.

The steps provided below are applicable for both Fedora desktop and server editions.

1. Change hostname

I usually use distribution's name as hostname. For example, the hostname for my Fedora 34 desktop would be fedora34. If you're anything like me, change the hostname to match with your current version.

To change hostname, run:

$ sudo hostnamectl set-hostname fedora35

2. Clean DNF metadata cache

After upgrade, the cached metadata and transacation can cleared using the following commands:

$ sudo dnf system-upgrade clean

$ sudo dnf clean packages

3. Remove old packages

List all packages with broken or unsatisfied dependencies, run:

$ sudo dnf update

$ sudo dnf repoquery --unsatisfied

List all duplicate packages using command:

$ sudo dnf repoquery --duplicates

List all packages that are not in the repositories:

$ sudo dnf list extras

If you don't need them anymore, simply run the following commands to remove old, and unused packages.

$ sudo dnf remove $(sudo dnf repoquery --extras --exclude=kernel,kernel-*)

$ sudo dnf autoremove

4. Clean up old kernels

The dnf autoremove command will not remove any unused kernels to avoid unintentional Kernel removals. If you want to remove old kernels, you can use the following command:

$ sudo dnf remove $(dnf repoquery --installonly --latest-limit=-3)

The above command will remove all old kernels and retain only the latest 3 kernels.

Heads Up: It is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED to keep at least two kernels. Because, if there is a problem in the current Kernel version after upgrading, you can safely switch to the older kernel.

5. Remove broken symlinks

After system upgrade, there would be some unused symlinks left in your system. You need to find and delete the dangling soft links or symlinks that don't point anywhere.

To find broken symlinks in /usr directory, run:

$ sudo symlinks -r /usr | grep dangling

To remove the dangling symlinks, run:

$ sudo symlinks -r -d /usr

Conclusion

In this guide, we have seen how to upgrade to Fedora 35 from Fedora 34 in GUI and CLI ways. At the end, we listed a few post-upgrade steps that needs to done to cleanup the fedora system.

If you have any questions, please post them in the comment section below.