Hi there – I’m having BIOS/USB problems and cannot upgrade thru bootable media, so i need to use dnf or similar. Can i upgrade 30 to 31 and change DE/spin at the same time? I’d like to to have the freshest new installation. Or maybe doing them separately is just as good? In which case, does it matter which i change first, 30-31 or DE?
Thanks so much
Hello, @fedyosha. Welcome to the comunity!
Really quick (if you have the time), you should take a look at the #start-here section to help yourself get started on here, if you haven’t already.
As for your question, have you looked at this article? It gives a thorough walkthrough for installing and using DNF’s ‘system-upgrade’ plugin.
I’d recommend starting with making a backup of your current system. “Timeshift” is a good way to do this.
Start by installing the plugin:
#dnf install dnf-plugin-system-upgrade
Next make sure all your packages are up to date:
#dnf upgrade --refresh
Now you download the packages for the new release:
#dnf system-upgrade download --releasever=31
And finaly, run the update:
#dnf system-upgrade reboot
The system will reboot, and install the new release. This will take some time, so be patient.
As for your DE, you can actually have more than one installed at once! It may require a bit more tinkering than installing a spin from scratch, but it shouldn’t be too difficult.
Which one were you thinking of trying?
If you’re doing the upgrade, I’d do that first, that way you don’t have to download the packages a second time.
Hey, thanks for the response. Yes, i looked at that article among others; i don’t believe it addresses my question, which is change of DE simultaneous with 30-31 upgrade…?
I’m sorry, does this mean you recommend doing the DE change first, so that i don’t download old-DE stuff with the 30-31 upgrade and then new DE stuff? I’m not clear.
Re which DE: I was a longtime KDE user, but i didn’t like/use a lot of their bundled apps nor the activities model, plus they used to be higher-resource-consuming vs recently (i gather), and i’ve had hardware limitation issues esp with some kernel updates that fedora has pushed out. So i thought i should switch to a DE that starts off more the way i like, a “traditional desktop metaphor”, and so i’m currently using cinnamon. There are nice things about it, but it’s toooooo limited re customization.
[Side rant: I’ve never understood the critique of DEs with “too many” options – just hide them in “advanced options” etc, what’s the harm? Aaaaaanyway…]
Eg i can’t set cinnamon to give me a notification when my battery is low but not yet critical – the only one i get is a pointless one seconds before shutdown. There used to be an applet that did that, then it grew outdated and didn’t work, and now it won’t even install, so there’s nothing… ??? Just one example.
So i’m thinking either KDE for the customizability, or xfce for lightweight but still more options than cinnamon. FWIW 
Thanks for your and any other people’s responses 
You should do the update first, that way you don’t have to re-download whatever DE you decide to try (‘dnf system-upgrade’ really is the best way to do upgrades).
Why not install both KDE and XFCE, and play around with both to see which you like more? Once you’ve settled in to one, you can remove whatever one’s you’re not using.
You can even pick and choose certain utilities from different DEs to get exactly what you want. For example, if you’re not a fan of Cinnamon’s power management utility, you could always install a different one (one of my systems is LXDE with a mixture of XFCE and other various utilities).
Why be stuck with any parts you don’t like?
If you haven’t found your ideal DE setup yet, I’d try all the things.
I’ve spent a long time getting my DE to be exactly how I want it.