Silverblue is an operating system for your desktop built on Fedora Linux. It’s excellent for daily use, development, and container-based workflows. It offers numerous advantages such as being able to roll back in case of any problems. This article provides the steps to rebase to the newly released Fedora Linux 44 Beta, and how to revert if anything unforeseen happens.
NOTE: Before attempting an upgrade to the Fedora Linux 44 Beta, apply any pending upgrades to your current system.
Updating using the terminal
Because Fedora Linux 44 Beta is not available in GNOME Software, the whole process must be done through a terminal.
First, check if the 44 branch is available, which should be true now:
$ ostree remote refs fedora
You should see the following line in the output:
fedora:fedora/44/x86_64/silverblue
If you want to pin the current deployment (this deployment will stay as an option in GRUB until you remove it), you can do it by running:
# 0 is entry position in rpm-ostree status
$ sudo ostree admin pin 0
To remove the pinned deployment use the following command ( “2” corresponds to the entry position in the output from rpm-ostree status ):
$ sudo ostree admin pin --unpin 2
Next, rebase your system to the Fedora 44 branch.
$ rpm-ostree rebase fedora:fedora/44/x86_64/silverblue
The final thing to do is restart your computer and boot to Fedora Silverblue 44 Beta.
How to revert
If anything bad happens — for instance, if you can’t boot to Fedora Silverblue 44 Beta at all — it’s easy to go back. Pick the previous entry in the GRUB boot menu (you need to press ESC during boot sequence to see the GRUB menu in newer versions of Fedora Silverblue), and your system will start in its previous state. To make this change permanent, use the following command:
$ rpm-ostree rollback
That’s it. Now you know how to rebase to Fedora Silverblue 44 Beta and fall back. So why not do it today?
Known issues
FAQ
Because there are similar questions in comments for each blog about rebasing to newer version of Silverblue I will try to answer them in this section.
Question: Can I skip versions during rebase of Fedora Linux? For example from Fedora Silverblue 42 to Fedora Silverblue 44?
Answer: Although it could be sometimes possible to skip versions during rebase, it is not recommended. You should always update to one version above (42->43 for example) to avoid unnecessary errors.
Question: I have rpm-fusion layered and I got errors during rebase. How should I do the rebase?
Answer: If you have rpm-fusion layered on your Silverblue installation, you should do the following before rebase:
rpm-ostree update --uninstall rpmfusion-free-release --uninstall rpmfusion-nonfree-release --install rpmfusion-free-release --install rpmfusion-nonfree-release
After doing this you can follow the guide in this article.
Question: Could this guide be used for other ostree editions (Fedora Atomic Desktops) as well like Kinoite, Sericea (Sway Atomic), Onyx (Budgie Atomic),…?
Yes, you can follow the Updating using the terminal part of this guide for every ostree edition of Fedora. Just use the corresponding branch. For example for Kinoite use fedora:fedora/44/x86_64/kinoite
Todd E Johnson
Looks like there should be one more known issue:
error: Packages not found: openh264
https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/no-mozilla-openh264-in-fedora-44/182111
Michal Konečný
This should be in the known issues for F44 Beta. Here only the specific atomic editions issues are mentioned.
Todd E Johnson
I am on F43 Kinolite trying to rebase to F44 Kinolite with openh264 installed.
I am DocKy ...
You should remove all package about h264. After rebase, add rpmfusion repo and install libavcodec-freeworld mesa-va-drivers-freeworld.
H264 video in file exploer and browser will work fine.
Ricky Tigg
Hello.
Output resulting from ‘
‘ alone is prone to human misinterpretation.
Deployment index has to be identified. That is achieved by the ‘
,
‘ option associated to the ‘
‘ command which solely prints it.
Ioannis Kingdom
After installing 44 Beta, files can no longer access my Google Drive account. I have tried signing out and then back in again, but to no avail – is this a known issue? If not, where can I log it as an issue, please?
Gregory Bartholomew
Is it this issue?: https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/google-drive-and-email-integration-error/170084
Ioannis Kingdom
Thanks, it’s related but more similar to this, I would say: https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/issues-with-google-drive-on-fedora-41-gnome/147703/2.
I am on Silverblue so on Gnome. I reverted back to 43 and Google drive was fine again.
I also encountered an issue where I could not create a new environment with toolbox – it just went on for ages without doing anything. I will look through the discussions to pointed me to, and will log an issue if I cannot find them – although I am not new to Linux, I am new to Fedora so appreciate the help – thanks again.