I’m continuing my evaluation of the Fedora Silverblue Linux distribution, which I started some time ago.

Let’s upgrade the system!

As mentioned in the official documentation:

On Atomic Desktops, you can keep using your computer while applying OS updates as they are downloaded and installed in the background. Once an update has been installed, you can reboot your computer to start using the new version. You will not have to wait for the update to be installed either during shutdown or boot up.

On Fedora Silverblue and Fedora Kinoite, OS updates are downloaded automatically and you will be notified when updates are ready to be applied via a reboot. This behavior can be changed in the settings.

On a fresh installation, these are the details of the installed system:

If we open the Gnome Software, we can see that updates are already detected:

Actually, the system is already downloading the updates (and applying them on a new image); after a while, you can simply restart:

After the reboot, the updated image will take effect:

In particular, just rebooting will lead you to a possibly already downloaded and updated image.

Automatic update behavior can be seen in the Gnome Software preferences:

From the command line, you can check available updated images:

Note the leading “dot” telling you what image you’re currently on.

After reboot, here’s the updated information:

You can also use the GRUB menu to possibly boot into the previous image:

You can then verify that you booted into the previous image:

The “status” command also shows when the new image is being downloaded; for example, after a fresh installation, a new upgrade will be automatically checked and downloaded:

You can also update using the command line. To check for available updates without downloading them, run:

For example, let’s say that I don’t have the latest update (see the status), I check for possible new updates:

I can perform the upgrade with:

And reboot.

With “–preview”, you can also see what’s going to be upgraded, for example:

Stay tuned for more blog posts about Fedora Silverblue!