Fedora 41 Updates question: is it safe to skip daily updates and update once per week instead?

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Hi, Fedora 41 seems to be getting frequent updates, sometimes two per day and I guess that’s normal and a good thing, right? But nearly all of them require a reboot, which is not convenient. So, my question is: can I safely ignore them and just run them all once a week? Will all the updates install at once without any complications if I do that?

I usually look through them so if I see something that looks important, I’ll run the update, but most of the time these updates don’t seem important enough to drop everything and reboot twice per day.

Thanks!

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I only update once a week. Usually that means one new kernal a week.

Only if you are waiting for a specific RPM update might you want to check more often.

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Great! Will do the same. Much appreciated :slight_smile:

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An option with security benefits would be to limit the daily or more frequent updates to those with higher advisory-severity levels and everything else once a week or less frequently.

dnf update --advisory-severities=critical,important,moderate,low --refresh
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Nice. Thank you, I didn’t know you can do this. I’ll give this is a shot then.

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Depends on your workflow, but frequent updates are not always a good thing (reproducibility). You can find a middle ground by configuring dnf to only pull in bug fixes and CVE/security fixes immediately, but leave major upgrades that can regress workflows for maintenance windows. How to install only security and bugfixes updates with DNF - Fedora Magazine

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It’s just a home desktop, I don’t do anything terribly important but if I’m playing a game or watching a movie I’d rather not do any updates that require a reboot. It’s just inconvenience, that’s all.

Thanks for the link, I’ll see if I can figure this out, that sounds like a good idea.

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If you don’t want the updates to interfere with the system while being used, there’s also the option of offline upgrades:

## Download upgradable packages (now) and store the transaction  to be 
## performed offline (at a later time):
sudo dnf upgrade --refresh --offline

## Start the offline transaction in a minimal environment,  when there's 
## no need to use the computer:
sudo dnf offline reboot

## Or, if you want the system to power off after the transaction is completed:
# sudo dnf offline reboot --poweroff
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Thanks. The download part is not a problem though, my internet is fast enough. It’s the daily reboots that I’m trying to avoid.

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I have something like this bound to a keyboard shortcut:

sudo dnf clean 'all' && sudo dnf update -y && sudo flatpak update

And press it 1-2 times a day. Afaik dnf doesn’t report if a reboot is required; I run that, glance at what it updates, and if I don’t see anything major, I just keep running things like normal no reboot. It’s worked out fine for me for years since at least early F30!

The full command I use is this which opens a ptyxis window (Workstation/GNOME) for the commands; I press F6 and turn-key update everything, with a bit of maintenance :sunglasses:

ptyxis --standalone --title='Fedora Updater — ' -- bash -c "sudo dnf clean 'all' && sudo dnf update -y && sync && sudo flatpak update && flatpak update && sync && sudo restorecon -F -I -R ~ && sudo fstrim --all --verbose && sync && read -n '1' -s -r -p 'Done. Press any key to exit.' && sleep '1'"
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Thanks. I saved all your suggestions in this thread to a file. Right now I’m in the middle of switching several PCs from Windows and doing some testing. So, for now, I will simply ignore the daily updates and will run all of them on Fridays manually. But once I settle down with Linux I will look into these suggestions. I’ve got quite a lot to learn.

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You can also just run the updates and not reboot until later

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I use topgrade to do something similar.

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It’s probably more advisable to update less frequently. Personally I only update every 1-2 weeks or if there’s security updates. I also leave Upgrades to the latest for a few months while the minor bugs get sorted. There’s also an option to do updates without rebooting like any other linux distro. It’s under Settings->Software Updates->Apply System Updates and choose Immediately. Also in there you can change the update notifications frequency.

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There is a small risk you we see apps break is you do not do off line updates or reboot immediately.

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I’ve never rebooted after an update in 30 years except when I recompiled the running kernel in the Debian/Linux 2.2 era aka Potato. Linux ain’t Windows.

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Well, good for you. Fedora asks me to reboot every single time there is an update and as a new Linux user that is what I get.

And yeah “Linux ain’t Windows” indeed, good point! That’s why I’m still mostly on Windows and struggling trying to use Linux as a desktop because so many things don’t work properly, too many bugs and glitches everywhere, too much tinkering required to get things to work. I’m sure it’s all NVIDIA’s fault not the fact that Wayland has been in development for 16 years and still lacks basic features and acceptable stability. Switching to X11 made things somewhat better, less glitchy and more stable, but for how long?

In slightly over one month that I have been using Fedora 41 KDE I had several total system lockups and I had to press the reset button at least four times, apps also crash constantly or have to be restarted to get rid of glitches. I don’t remember the last time any of my Windows PCs crashed so hard that I had to reset it and I don’t see so many software glitches on Windows.

The only thing that gives me trouble on Windows is, ironically, the Nextcloud desktop client. Otherwise my PCs would have been running for months at a time. I disabled feature updates and I’m only getting security patches that don’t require reboots. If it wasn’t for the bugged Nextcloud client I would never need to reboot.

I want to make it clear that my problem is with Linux as a general desktop platform, not Linux in general. I run couple of Debian servers and they’re fine but Linux on the desktop is juts not there yet. I can use it if I have to but given the choice I’d rather stay on Windows at this time.

I’m gonna give it another shot when Fedora 42 and KDE Plasma 6.3 come out in few months.

Sorry for the rant, but every time someone says something like “Linux ain’t Windows” it triggers me. I guess you haven’t used Windows since 95 or something. Modern Windows may be bloated and loaded with spyware and crapware but it has been rock solid and fast for me, both the system and the applications; the bloat and the crap can be removed easy.

I want to leave Windows because where Microsoft is taking it, but I find Windows infinitely more stable at this time that any desktop Linux I have tried in the last year and I’m having hard time leaving it behind. Though Microsoft makes is harder with every update to customize Windows and to remove unwanted components. I’m guessing I will switch sooner or later as the future of Windows seems to be AI spyware and forced cloud (Microsoft cloud to be sure) and I don’t want to be part of that future.

Again, sorry for the rant but I’m so frustrated.

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Hey no worries.

I too struggle with Linux, even though I’ve been using it for 30 years. I’m strongly in dissacord with decisions being made at top level and desktops in general.

I’m still using Win 7, need it for work but not willing to install anything equal to or above Win 8.

Instralled Fedora only because the time is near browsers will stop to function in Win 7. Installed Cinnanmon desktop over gnome because I can’t stand Gnome (never did) and Cinnamon is very similar in look to Win XP. BTW, My Win 7 machines are still configured to look like XP, with a dark theme.

I totally agree with your analysis.

I know for a fact that a reboot is not required to install updates in any Linux Distro. I can install updates via “sudo dnf --refresh upgrade” without restarting.

Oh, and particularly, I stay away from NVIDIA and Wayland.

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Thank you for understanding. I didn’t want to come across as a Linux hater but Linux on the desktop does have numerous problems and the levels of denial in the community are often dumbfounding.

Mint with Cinnamon was my previous favorite but I found it somewhat limiting. I really like KDE software and Plasma… and Fedora seems like a perfect base for KDE. Though, it seems KDE’s extensive customization options do come at the price of stability to some degree. Cinnamon seems more stable. So I’m kind of set on KDE as I tested pretty much all desktop environments combined with most distros and none, except Cinnamon and Plasma worked out for me.

I can’t stay away from NVIDIA. I have two PCs with recent NVIDIA GPUs. If I was building a new PC from scratch for Linux I would have gone all AMD. But right now I don’t want any expenses until I am convinced that I can stay on Linux long term.

Though I can probably stay away from Wayland for the time being, assuming my GSYNC monitor works with X11, I didn’t get there yet.

I may even give up on gaming altogether as I’m getting tired of the gaming industry shenanigans as much as I’m getting tired of Microsoft shenanigans. I mostly play older games, only bought two minor games in the last three years, I don’t see anything in the near future that interests me. So I may not even have the need for a high GPU in the coming years and I will probably be fine with AMD. My display should also be able to handle AMD Freesync, by the way.

But as I said, I don’t want to make any drastic hardware changes or spend money right now.

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When .so used by some gui apps are upgraded it can cause crashes in those apps. Updating the kernel is not going to be an issue if you take a long time reboot.