How to Upgrade to Fedora 35 from Fedora 34

Fedora has released their first official beta release for Fedora 35 that was made available on the 14th of September 2021. The new OS brings quite a few changes, most notably the Linux Kernel 5.14, Gnome 41, PHP 8, Flatpack third-party repository support, New panel for multitasking settings, Power profiles access from the system tray menu, and much more.

The tutorial below will teach you how to successfully upgrade Fedora 34 to the newly released Fedora 35 Beta.

Fedora 35: Release Date Timeline

Fedora 35 is still scheduled to be released on October 19th, 2021.

The following is a timeline of the release.

• Beta Freeze : Aug 24, 2021
• Beta Release: Sept 14, 2021
• Fallback Beta 1: Sept 21, 2021
• Fallback Beta 2: Sept 28, 2021
• Final Freeze: Oct 5, 2021
• Final Release: Oct 19, 2021

However, this date can always be pushed back last minute, but it looks set in stone for now.

Prerequisites for Upgrade

• Recommended OS: Fedora 34
• User account: A user account with sudo or root access.
• Required: Internet Connection

Updating Operating System

First, before anything, update your Fedora operating system to make sure all existing packages are up to date:

sudo dnf upgrade --refresh

Remove Old Obsolete Packages

Ideally, you should clean up your existing Fedora system by removing old packages as follows:

sudo dnf autoremove

Upgrade to Fedora 35

The first step is to open your Fedora terminal execute the following command to install the dnf-plugin-system-upgrade package:

sudo dnf install dnf-plugin-system-upgrade

Note that this should be installed by default; however, running it should be done to ensure it is on your system.

The next step is to run the system-upgrade command now to download the Fedora Beta release 35.

sudo dnf system-upgrade download --releasever=35

Example output:

Type “Y,” then press “ENTER KEY” to proceed.

Next, you will be prompted with a new message about the overall install, upgrade, and downgrade of packages and the download size.

Example:

Type “Y,” then press “ENTER KEY” to proceed.

This will take some time depending on hardware and the operating systems available Internet connection.

During the installation, you will see a message advising about importing the GPG key for Fedora 35.

Example:

Type “Y,” then press “ENTER KEY” to proceed.

Example output:

Key imported successfully

Next, you will see in your terminal the process is complete and that you will now need to reboot your Fedora system to activate Fedora 35 fully.

Example:

To reboot your system, use the following command:

sudo dnf system-upgrade reboot

The system will now reboot, and you will see a progress bar advising you of the final progress.

Example of Reboot upgrade in progress:

Once the upgrade is complete, Fedora will return you to the login screen.

First Look Impressions & Verify Fedora OS Version

Once you have logged in, you will notice a new default background with some slight UI changes/improvements:

Example:

And now the applications menu:

Next, it is a good idea to run the following cat command in your Fedora 35 terminal to verify the upgrade is successful:

cat /etc/os-release

Example output:

As you can see, you have successfully upgraded to Fedora Linux to version “35 (Workstation Edition Prerelease).”

Lastly, when upgrading any Linux OS system, it is advised to clean obsolete/old packages. To do this on Fedora 35, use the following command:

sudo dnf system-upgrade clean

Example output:

Cleaning up downloaded data...

Comments and Conclusion

In the tutorial, you have learned how to upgrade from Fedora 34 to Fedora 35. Note, Fedora 35 is still in beta mode. It is advised highly to take data backups before upgrading and have a rollback option just in case. This release also removes Python 3.5 (EOL Sep 2020) dependencies completely.