How to Upgrade Fedora using DNF

Written by Rahul, Updated on April 7, 2021

The Fedora 33 is finally released. Fedora Workstation users may require upgrading their Workstations to use the latest version.

This tutorial will help you to upgrade to Fedora 33 Workstation using command line utility DNF. This is the recommended way to upgrade your Fedora release. The new users can download the latest Fedora ISO images.

Upgrade Fedora via DNF

Generally, servers run without any Desktop environment. So this section will useful for upgrading the Fedora server as well as the workstation using the command line. Make sure you have proper backups of your data on the external backup drive.

Make sure to backup all your important data before upgrade to an extrnal device. The system upgrades are potentially risky, be prepared for any data loss.

1. Update Current Packages

Make sure you are running the current system with the latest packages. You can update your system using the DNF command-line tool.

sudo dnf upgrade --refresh

2. Install DNF Upgrade Plugin

DNF required a system upgrade plugin to be installed. So use the following command to install system upgrade dnf plugin.

sudo dnf install dnf-plugin-system-upgrade

3. Download the Upgrade Packages

After successfully installing the system upgrade plugin. Run the following command, this will download the new packages of Fedora 33 to your system.

sudo dnf system-upgrade download --refresh --releasever=33

If any of the packages have unsatisfied dependencies, Fedora will refuse the upgrade process. You can use --allowerasing option with the above command, This will remove any packages which are broken. Watch the output of the command to check which packages are getting removed from the system, So you can install again.

4. Final Upgrade to Latest Fedora

Finally, run the following command to start the upgrade process. This will reboot your system and start the upgrade process

sudo dnf system-upgrade reboot

You will see your desktop screen below showing the upgrade process. This process will take a long time depends on your system and network speed. Let’s have a coffee and take rest.

After upgrading to Fedora 33, Login to your desktop and check the Fedora version. The above image is from the old version of Fedora update and used for reference only.

Reference:
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DNF_system_upgrade

2 Comments

Krystian Juskowiak Reply
September 27, 2014 at 2:11 pm
Hello 🙂
New version of my unofficial GUI for FedUp, which simplify upgrade process was released (v1.0.2).
I’ve added “check for updates” option so keeping with up-to-date is not a problem anymore 🙂
KFUpgrade need only Java JRE installed and Xterm.
Hope it simplify someone upgrade process 🙂
Current link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/biygu679mlxscnp/KFUpgrade-v1.0.2.tar.gz?dl=0
Krystian Juskowiak Reply
August 16, 2014 at 6:44 pm
Hello 🙂
If someone don’t like using CLI by finger, I’ve wrote unofficial GUI for FedUP (KFUpgrade) – it can download files for upgrade to F19/20/21 (Alpha). Next Step after GUI is Step 2.6 from Your tutorial – start upgrade in GRUB. I’ve wrote it for myself, but under GPLv3 license and source code is distributed with application, so it’s available for everyone 🙂
To work it only need Java JRE installed (Oracle or OpenJDK) and Xterm (rpm is not avaible at this moment, lack of knowledge how to build it, so depends must be installed manually).
Screenshots:
– http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=1znrajd&s=8#.U–ji0RfO2c
– http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=qnjuyt&s=8#.U–mYERfO2c
Download: