Help me understand Linux distros updates. - eviltoast

Hi I’m relatively new to Linux. There’s talk about updating, say from Fedora 37 to 38.

Is this something that needs to happen manually? If I solely update through the updater software, I’m not getting the whole “38”?

I understand that, of course, I won’t see updates on the installer or I won’t use a new supported partition type unless I install it again.

Apart from that, what’s missing? Some software won’t be updated? The kernel?

Thank you all!

  • cryball@sopuli.xyz
    16·
    1 year ago

    This is an imperfect analogy, but think of updating between Windows 10 and 11 versus installing updates on windows 10 or win 11.

    I have no experience with Fedora, but AFAIK at least in Ubuntu/Debian land, updates are installed from OS version specific package repositories. When the version of the OS is no longer supported, those repositories might not receive updates anymore.

    EDIT: this is the main reason I have a rolling release distro on most of my personal machines. The package repos have the newest packages without having to update my OS major version every now and then.