How to Upgrade to Fedora 34 from Fedora 33 Workstation

Fedora 34 released with new features and updates. If you are planning to upgrade to taste the top new features, then you are at the right place. Presenting the steps to upgrade to Fedora 34 from Fedora 33 workstation with GUI and CLI methods.

There are two ways you can upgrade – a) Graphical Methos (GUI) b) Command Line Methos (CLI). You can follow either of them. But there are additional pre-requisites which you should follow before starting the upgrade process.

Table of Contents

Steps to follow before Upgrade

Open GNOME software application and check for any pending updates. Or, open a terminal and run the following command to make sure your system is up to date.

sudo dnf update

After the above command is complete, do a reboot of your system. Because Fedora applies certain updates during restarts.

Take backups of your personal files in your home directory – e.g. Pictures, Downloads, Documents, etc. You can copy them separately in any external USB/storage or keep them in a cloud backup.

Make sure you disable all GNOME extensions (this is for GNOME desktop only). Because over the months you may have installed many extensions and they might not work well with GNOME 40. So, open the GNOME Tweak tool and disable all the extensions to be on the safe side. You can enable them later after upgrade via the newly designed Extensions Flatpak app.

Check out the common Fedora 34 bugs page if there are any ongoing issues with the upgrade process that might cause trouble.

Also, the Upgrade process takes time (in hours), so make sure you have stable internet and time available for the upgrade to complete.

How to Upgrade to Fedora 34 from Fedora 33 Workstation

Graphical Method (GUI)

Fedora 34 released on April 27, 2021.

Once the Fedora 34 released officially, you should be getting a notification that an upgrade is available for your Fedora 33 system. If you are not getting any notification, wait for a day or two after the release. It totally depends on mirrors and servers.

Click on the notification which opens up the GNOME Software (for GNOME desktop version).

Still, if the notification is not there, open the GNOME Software app and go to the Updates tab and you should see a message saying that Fedora 34 is available.

Choose Download to fetch the required packages and wait until it finishes. Once completed, click restart from the GNOME Software to restart your system and complete the upgrade process.

Command Line (CLI) method to Upgrade to Fedora 34

You can follow the below steps right now, even if Fedora 34 is not yet released.

If you are comfortable with the command line, you can use the dnf upgrade command to perform the upgrade process.

Open up the terminal and run the below command:

sudo dnf upgrade --refresh

This command will refresh the packages for the new upgrade stream to get ready for Fedora 34.

Next, install the dnf upgrade plugin by running the below command. This is required for the upgrade process.

sudo dnf install dnf-plugin-system-upgrade

Make sure your system is up to date by running the below command and install any necessary pending updates. Do it once again (if you have done it via pre-upgrade steps)

sudo dnf --refresh upgrade

Initiate the download process by running the below command. This command will fetch all required packages and save them locally before the upgrade.

sudo dnf system-upgrade download --releasever=34

If you installed a lot of packages, applications manually and not sure whether they are properly supported by Fedora 34 then run the above command with “–allowerasing” flag. When you provide this, dnf will remove the packages that are blockers for your system upgrade.

The above command displays what is going to be replaced, updated, upgraded, or downgraded. Something like below. Carefully glance through the list if you want to review the list. Or, you can just check the red-marked items and start the upgrade process. Remember the download size ideally is in GB, so it might take some time based on your internet speed.

After the above command is complete, run the below command to start the actual upgrade.

sudo dnf system-upgrade reboot

The system will reboot automatically and wait until the entire upgrade process completes. As I mentioned earlier, this might take time in terms of hours depending on your system hardware, hence be patient.

If all goes well, you will be greeted with a brand new Fedora 34 system.

Post Install steps

After the upgrade is complete, you can run the following commands to clean up the system via terminal. The following command removes cached metadata and transactions used for the upgrade process.