Bonum Certa Men Certa

Christmas a Good Time to Install Fedora 20, But Not Upgrade to It

Wallpaper



Summary: Fedora 20 receives positive reviews, but the upgrade process from Fedora 19 to Fedora 20 is allegedly "broken"

Fedora 20 was released one week ago [1,2], as we noted before. It looks nice and it comes in many 'flavours'. It lacks all sorts of proprietary software which some people insist on adding (post-installation) [3] and it has already received good reviews [4] and benchmark analyses [5]. Red Hat staff wrote about Fedora on behalf of Linux.com [6], but one writer criticises technology publications of ignoring a "broken" upgrade process [7,8]. The author of the original article has a decent track record and no known hostility towards Fedora, so the accusation may be legitimate and well-researched. Even years ago it was common to hear of people (mostly in support forums) disappointed with the Fedora upgrade process, arguing that it had rendered their system/s unusable.

After 10 years of using Fedora (on and off) I can warmly recommend it. When it comes to upgrades, however, be careful. A defunct machine can be the opposite of a Christmas gift. I recently struggled with many hardware issues that ruined my month.



Related/contextual items from the news:

  1. Fedora 20 Codenamed “Heisenbug” Released – Installation Guide with Screenshots


  2. Fedora 20 Linux Debuts, Improves Cloud Image


  3. Things to do after installing Fedora 20


  4. Ferocious Fedora 20 review: Cutting edge Linux still as sharp as ever
    If you want to a bleeding edge desktop or server Linux, then Fedora is the Linux distribution for you. If you want to play it safe, try something else.


  5. Fedora 19 vs. Fedora 20 Linux Benchmarks
    Published today are benchmarks from two Intel systems comparing the performance of Fedora 19 "Schrödinger's Cat" to Fedora 20 "Heisenbug" for various workloads. Especially for those using open-source graphics drivers, Fedora 20 can be worth the upgrade for performance reasons.


  6. Focus on Fedora 20 Features: ARM
    It's been a long time coming, but the Fedora 20 "Heisenbug" release brings ARM to equal status in Fedora with x86 and x86_64 releases. The Fedora 20 release, out just more than a month after the 10th anniversary of the first Fedora release, now boasts ARM as a primary architecture.

    It's not the first release to actually support ARM, but prior to Fedora 20 the ARM support was not considered a blocker for release or necessarily going to receive updates at the same time as its x86/x86_64 brethren.


  7. Fedora 20 upgrade broken


    Upgrading to Fedora 20, the version of Red Hat's community Linux distribution released this week, from version 19, at least, is broken and this fact does not seem to have been disseminated to many tech publications that have written about the release.


  8. Fedora and Red Hat in the News
    It's been an interesting day in the Linuxhood today. Sam Varghese posted that Fedora's upgrade is broken and that no one is reporting it, while Jamie Watson published a 16-page Anaconda walk-through. The Motley Fool gave a recap of Red Hat positions ahead of their quarterly earnings report expected Thursday. The Red Hat Blog teased of upcoming articles highlighting Red Hat 7 features. And Red Hat is the 23rd best place to work.


Recent Techrights' Posts

Last Week's EPO Strike Was the Biggest (Highest Participation Rate), Hours Ago General Assembly Discussed Next (Growing) Intensity of Strikes
Well done and well attended
 
Gemini Links 24/03/2026: Slop Interview and Why Slop Makes Lousy Code
Links for the day
Richard Stallman to Give Public Talk This Thursday at the University of Bologna (Italy)
Hardly the first time he speaks in Bologna
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, March 23, 2026
IRC logs for Monday, March 23, 2026
Gemini Links 23/03/2026: "Mandatory" Bad Things and Dangers of Perfection Aspirations
Links for the day
SLAPP Censorship - Part 20 Out of 200: All Roads Lead to Rome and to GAFAM Funding
Now about 10% into this series
Mass Layoffs at HashiCorp, IBM Hid Them
The media did not mention those layoffs
Microsoft Downgraded on Concerns (Lack of Growth) Amid Silent Layoffs in 2026
The press isn't functioning anymore
Links 23/03/2026: Gulf Water at Risk, Heatwave in Malaysia
Links for the day
Slop Means False, New Article by Cybershow
"We are living in a world that is rapidly divesting from reality."
Debianism election 2026 community poll created, everybody can vote
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 23/03/2026: "Shocking Peter Thiel Antichrist Lectures", Robert Mueller Remembered
Links for the day
The Scandal Bigger Than IBM/Red Hat Layoffs is the de Facto "Media Blackout" About Those Layoffs
So we have a media crisis, aside from the economic crises
Gemini Links 23/03/2026: Geminispace/Elpher Enhancement and the Cerberus Cinco
Links for the day
Fear is Not a Legitimate Factor
Smart people know that trying to prevent moral people from doing the "Right Thing" will backfire
Fuel Autonomy and What It Teaches Us About Software Autonomy (or Software Freedom)
Need we wait until a "software Pearl Harbor" or protect ourselves proactively by weaning ourselves off of GAFAMware?
Scheduled Maintenance This Coming Wednesday
Other than that, all is the same and we carry on as usual
Most Press Articles About IBM Are LLM Slop, Sometimes With Slop Images
IBM basically laid off almost 1,000 people last week [...] At the moment about 75% of the 'articles' we see about IBM (in recent days) are some kind of slop
Links 23/03/2026: Security Breaches, Energy Shortages, Another SRA Scandal, and Patents on Nature
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, March 22, 2026
IRC logs for Sunday, March 22, 2026
Streisand Effect and Justice
This weekend this site has served over 8 million Web requests
Gemini Links 22/03/2026: "Woman of Tomorrow" and "First Steps in Geminispace"
Links for the day
SLAPP Censorship - Part 19 Out of 200: They Were Ill-prepared for Tough Questions in Cross-Examination
Very ill-prepared for the deteriorating situation caused by their clients' past behaviour towards many people, including high-profile figures who offered to testify
The Media Sold Out to Slop Bros
If you wish for the hype to stop, then stop participating in it
EPO Strike a Week From Now, After That Strikes Can Become Permanent
A week from tomorrow there will be another strike
The Only Non-IBM Staff in Fedora Council/Leadership Attacks Booting Freedom (Just Like the Master Wants)
Last week IBM laid off almost 1,000 people in Confluent and the media didn't write anything about it, so don't expect anyone in what's left of the media to comment on Fedora's demise and silent layoffs at Red Hat
Just Like a Founder of XBox Said, Microsoft XBox is Collapsing, Management Continue to Jump Ship
Nowadays Microsoft tries to promote this idea that Windows is XBox and XBox is Windows
Links 22/03/2026: Slop Triggers Emergency at Meta, Energy Prices Rise Sharply
Links for the day
Links 22/03/2026: Microsoft 'Open' 'AI' in Legal Trouble (Plagiarism, Distortion, Misrepresentation); Facebook/Meta Kills Off "Horizon Worlds"
Links for the day
Racism Dressed Up as "Choice"
Racism is rampant at IBM
Probably an All-Time Record
Our investment in our own SSG is paying off
Your Site Should Implement Its Own Search (Before It's Too Late)
GAFAM was never trustworthy
Gemini Links 22/03/2026: LLM Slop Attacks USENET, Announcing Pig (New Game in Gemini Protocol)
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, March 21, 2026
IRC logs for Saturday, March 21, 2026