Template:Rawhide branched install methods

Using $RELEASE

This section discusses how to use $RELEASE, as a live system or permanently installed.

Using a test system

If you are not able or wanting to run $RELEASE as your primary system you could instead run it:

• As a live environment only
• In a virtual machine (VM) instance
• On a secondary system
• On a multiboot system, alongside a stable release of Fedora or another operating system

This allows you to test $RELEASE without any impact to your day-to-day workflow.

Install from nightly composes

Each day (or sometimes more than once per day) , a full 'compose' of the tree is attempted. This will usually result in the creation of all or most of the usual install, live and disk images, installer trees and so forth. Successful composes are synced to the /fedora/linux/development/ directory on the mirrors, and you can find the images there.

Each successful compose is tested by openQA and a mail summarizing the results is sent to the devel and test mailing lists, so you can check the openQA interface or the 'compose check report' emails to check whether that day's compose is installable. You may also use the nightly image finder tool maintained and hosted by a Fedora QA team member, which conveniently offers the last completed build for each image and the last that passed all tests, for openQA or Autocloud-tested images.

At least the Server and Everything network install images should always be present, as composes are considered to have failed if creation of those images fails. However, at present they are not guaranteed to be working every day.

Follow the normal installation procedure to install $RELEASE.

For PXE installations, the relevant files can be found in the pub/fedora/linux/development/42/Everything/(arch)/os/images/pxeboot directory.

Using nightlies in the past was a fragile way to install $RELEASE, but with improved compose processes since Fedora 24 and automated testing since Fedora 23, their quality has improved substantially and this will often result in the best experience.

Point installer to $RELEASE

You can sometimes install $RELEASE by using a stable install media and pointing it to the $RELEASE repositories for packages to install. In the past this was sometimes considered a more reliable method than using a $RELEASE compose, but with improvements to the compose and test process in the last few years this is rarely likely to be a good choice any longer. If you wish to try it, however, you can:

1. Download the latest stable or branched install media (network install or offline ("DVD") installer image)
2. Copy to local media (USB or DVD or CD)
3. Boot media and go to the 'Installation Source' screen and manually enter: https://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/development/42/Everything/x86_64/os/ (or i386 for 32-bit)
4. Finish the install as normal.

For this method to work, there should be no major changes in $RELEASE that the installer is not ready for, such as packages it depends on being retired or other similar situations.

Upgrade from existing stable install

You may use DNF_system_upgrade to upgrade from the most recent stable release. You will need to have such an install in place and should definitely update to the newest updates before starting. As an exception, if you are using a immutable variant like Silverblue, you may use rpm-ostree rebase to perform the upgrade, see Fedora Docs for more details.

This method may fail if there are upgrade path issues (newer packages in stable or than $RELEASE), or broken dependencies.