
Lobotomizing Gnome - deafcalculus
https://eklitzke.org/lobotomizing-gnome
======
JamesMcMinn
The author wants to remove JavaScript from their desktop and does this by
disabling all extensions in the hope that it will also disable Gnomes
JavaScript engine. What the author does not appear to understand is that
extensions are written in JavaScript because Gnome shell is written in
JavaScript.

Gnome works very well for my workflow, and I find much of the "bloat" to be
quite useful in day to day usage, but can understand the desire to remove
things like maps and Tracker if you don't use them. My single biggest issue
with Gnome stems from the performance of Gnome-shell which lags and stutters
its way through animations leading to a desktop which often feels like it's
struggling even on powerful hardware.

~~~
NoGravitas
I don't think the author fails to understand that, They know that Gnome Shell
is written in JavaScript and are not trying to eliminate JS from their desktop
-- they are trying to _minimize_ the amount of JS running and thereby limit
the scope of the memory leaks.

~~~
ComputerGuru
Actually, it does seem the author is unaware of the extent of JS usage in
Gnome Shell:

> User extensions are a mechanism that allow users to write GNOME extensions
> in Javascript, similar to how Chrome and Firefox extensions work. In my
> opinion this idea has dubious merit, and my personal feeling is the less
> Javascript in my life the better. I felt somewhat vindicated about this
> decision during recent coverage of a memory leak in GNOME Shell. The
> underlying issue was related to the Javascript garbage collector in GNOME
> Shell not collecting object references in a timely manner. I’m not sure that
> disabling user extensions actually disables the Javascript engine
> completely, but it definitely minimizes it to the least possible scope.

------
keyle
I recently switched to Linux (from Windows 10 - forced upgrade took 45' in the
middle of an extremely important moment)

Debian netinstall + Mate desktop (Gnome 2/3 extension?)

I expected to switch back within a week. Surprisingly, I love it. After a few
tweaks and Nvidia drivers installed, it's way better than I expected. Super
fast, minimal, and no annoyances.

Linux desktop really has improved in the last 20 years, since I last tried it.

~~~
tumdum_
Wait ~6 months, and you will encounter a case where simple package update will
cost you more than that 45 minutes ;)

~~~
taneq
Maybe, but it's never going to force you to reboot to install some shovelware
that you don't want and can't opt out of.

~~~
tumdum_
Migration of many distros to systemd forced many people to do exactly that ;)

~~~
Accacin
Did it? I must have missed that.

~~~
dpwm
There was a little bit of pain but it was nowhere near as bad as some make
out. I migrated all my arch boxes at the time just fine and the main work was
writing unit files -- which compared to writing init scripts was mainly
trivial.

Is systemd the best init system? No. But to some of us it was an improvement
over what came before it and it really hasn't given us the trouble that others
claim it has given them.

I remember a colleague who ran Linux From Scratch on his laptop who was
abhorred by the changes. We spent an afternoon trying to remove the stuff from
an Ubuntu VM image he didn't consider necessary and a lot of it was really
alien to him. As an fvwm user he really couldn't understand why almost
everything needed dbus and pulseaudio. I couldn't understand a lot of the
strange packaging dependencies either. And yet these are things that to me
have improved real pain-points in linux distros.

------
twblalock
Open-source desktops are never perfect for anyone, but everyone expects them
to be. For everyone who says they are too bloated, someone else says they are
too spartan. That's probably why there are so many of them.

I would expect working on Gnome (or KDE or Cinnamon or Mate or XFCE or LXDE,
the list goes on) to be a thankless task. You try to please everybody and yet
please nobody. The imperfections of Linux desktops are more grating because of
the knowledge that alternatives exist.

On Windows or Mac OS, you are stuck with the desktop you have, with little
ability to do anything other than basic customizations. But people soldier on
and get used to it because they have no choice.

I wonder whose users are truly more satisfied in the end.

~~~
Brometheus
I tried to switch to Linux for philosophical and customization reasons. Found
it nearly impossible to configure stuff reliably and such it wont crash in new
interesting ways. For example: Create a new keyboard layout and have it appear
in KDE keyboard settings. Good luck. Input Manager for macOS: done.

~~~
finchisko
It's interesting how different people can have completely opposite experience.
I've modified my Microsoft keyboard that zoom slider works as Spotify control
buttons play/stop/next. I doubt I would be able to achieve something like this
in macOS or Windows. It works all the time, super reliably.

[https://gist.github.com/mauron85/5f4b640aa4e5e968e0496ac5a08...](https://gist.github.com/mauron85/5f4b640aa4e5e968e0496ac5a0878715)

~~~
Shoue
You can probably use Autohotkey to achieve the same thing on Windows. It's a
great tool to be aware of should you ever have to use Windows for any reason –
you can also use it to push windows to virtual desktops and others,
approaching a more Linux-y experience. Someone even wrote a tiling WM in AHK:
[https://github.com/fuhsjr00/bug.n](https://github.com/fuhsjr00/bug.n)

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
AHK is the kind of thing that should have been built into desktop environments
since '95\. Why go through the trouble of adding all these workflow features
that may or may not align with what actually makes the user's workflow better
when you could add a scripting environment that allows the user to do that for
themselves and a few pre-configured defaults.

------
phkahler
Some of the issues stem from a tendency of Gnome to want to "manage" your
stuff for you. Evolution sticking its fingers into other things, something
indexing files, apps wanting to manage your photos. I've had trouble with my
music collection. You'd think it's possible to copy some folders with .mp3
files into your home directory and point the music app at it. But no, files
have to be imported or some crap and I actually had so much trouble with this
on F26 or so that I gave up. Seriously, apps have to get dumb again in order
to work. It's like IDEs for software - a folder structure with .c .h and make
files should define a software project, but so many IDEs want to "manage"
things in a proprietary project file of some sort and it tends to make things
less portable or functional outside that paradigm. I get that there are
advantages to all of these things if you do things the way the developers
intended, but it ends up feeling like Apples attitude of "we know what's best
for you" and iTunes wanting to take over your system.

~~~
peatmoss
BeOS. The BeOS filesystem had some nifty metadata features and the company was
keen to show those off. Plus, I suspect they had to get creative to seed the
OS with apps back in the day.

As a result, many apps ended up feeling like a pretty thin veneer around a
file explorer. My memory is a little foggy, but the music player and the email
app come to mind.

The opposite model was the iTunes model: a monolithic app that reproduced a
bunch of functionality of the file system, but ultimately nerfed the power.

I’m otherwise not too crazy nostalgic about BeOS (NeXT was the better OS in
many ways). But man, some things were really great with that system.

------
teekert
Did this guys just completely ignore Plasma (KDE)?? I'd say they are the ones
ahead on high DPI and Wayland... Seriously, install it, even on old hardware.
Plasma is really fast and stable these days. Also, Mate has no problems with
High DPI and given the right theme look beautiful with rounded corners all
over the place.

Edit: Ok, I may have misread the piece as a critique at first but it's just
his way of getting Gnome more functional. Anyway, his assumptions regarding
"Gnome being ahead" are outdated and it seems like one is ready for DE switch,
if one must lobotomize her/his DE after every install.

~~~
callahad
Not the author, but I just tried KDE for two weeks, and coming from Gnome, I
couldn't acclimate. I found the Plasma experience unpolished, inconsistent,
and prone to error. I also ran into quite a few bugs (at one point, Plasma
just stopped giving me window previews when alt-tabbing, and not a single
alternative alt-tab style from the built-in installer worked for me).

Two examples of things I missed coming from Gnome:

\- I really appreciate the gnome-shell's unified "Activities" overview: I tap
Super and I get a single experience that combines Plasma's Quick Launch Bar,
Present Windows, and Desktop Grid features. I find that to be a faster, more
fluid experience than the Plasma equivalents.

\- KWin expected me to resize windows by, somehow, hitting a border that's
exactly 1 pixel wide. I evidently don't have the motor control to do that
quickly or reliably. Gnome adds a ~10 pixel wide invisible border to each
window which is quick and easy to hit regardless of input device.

That's not to say everything is all roses in Gnome land, either, but what's
there just seems more reliable, consistent, and intentionally designed. Still,
there's no panacea. I _wish_ Gnome's screen zoom was half as fast and fluid as
Plasma's. I wish Gnome still supported desktop icons. And AppIndicators. And a
2D grid of virtual desktops. I wish Gnome felt as responsive as Plasma.

I'm planning a switch from Fedora to OpenSUSE later this year, at which point
I'll give Plasma another shot and be more diligent about recording and
reporting bugs I run across.

~~~
ufo
IIRC on kde you can also resize windows with alt + right click, without
needing to hit exactly the border. (Or maybe its middle click I don't
remember. ) this is similar to alt + left click to drag a window without
clicking the title bar.

On gnome you can use Super + middle click to resize things and super + left
click to drag them

~~~
rgun
I am on KDE 5 and TIL! Thanks.

Alt+right click resizes window and Alt+left click drags the window.

------
FrozenVoid
This mentality "lets add a daemon to run in background 24/7" to provide some
service thats sits mostly unused is unacceptable. Its not only gnome
developers, its widespread in open-source. The competitive edge of Linux is
reduced quite a bit when there is enough bloatware running around by default.

~~~
cryptonector
If such a daemon does not use cycles unless called out to, then the only
problem is that it's one more attack vector. Oh wait.

~~~
nisa
not sure if it's still a thing but akonadi / baloo on kde manages to even
saturate slower sata-ssd random io and fills a mysql database. Lot's of fun if
you have several kernel tree / buildroots laying around in your home. baloo
also really likes to segfault when parsing content and is not sandboxed afaik.

I really like KDE but this part is sadly a good in theory but pure pita in
practice.

------
everybodyknows
OP's experience is based on Fedora. If you're on Ubuntu, a couple of cautions:

1\. A fair amount of the OP advice is Wayland-specific -- but Wayland has been
disabled by default in Ubuntu 18.04.

2\. Ubuntu layers its own tweaks on top of GNOME's. See
/usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas/com.{ubuntu,canonical}*

Those caveats noted, the author's approach to GNOME desktop parallels my own
current working solution for Ubuntu, arrived after at after way too many hours
in tedious experiment with KDE, XFCE, LXDE, OpenBox, gnome-look.org themes,
gconf-editor, dconf-editor, and even gnome-tweak-tool. These approaches all
proved to suffer from one or more critical failings:

1\. Not easily archive/documented, for repetition with later Linux reinstalls.
2\. Not easily reviewable/reversible, in case of trouble later. 3\. Monolithic
or coarse-grained, and introduce infelicities of their own. So then you try to
tweak the tweak ... oy vey. 4\. Weak documentation, version skew risk, and
doubtful developer commitment. 5\. Interact badly with other tweaks. 6\.
Incomplete, as judged by my needs. Tweaks from other sources required, each
coming with other variations of [1-5].

To remedy failings (1) and (2), with customizations expressible in text,
Ansible is a solution for people invested or ready to invest in learning
Ansible. Similarly Git, or Quilt.

To expose the actions of `dconf`:

    
    
      $ strace -f -e trace=network,ipc,process,write dconf ...
      $ file $HOME/.config/dconf/user
    

To begin to understand some of the dynamics that have shaped GNOME:

    
    
      https://www.gnome.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/GAR2016-web.pdf
      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14945871
      https://bugzilla.gnome.org/

------
celerity
A lot of the comments here are arguing for or against the author's specific
choices, but I would like to point out how great it is that Linux desktop
environments are this customizable in the first place.

I recently switched back to Linux after using a Mac for a couple of years, and
was blown away with how far Gnome has gotten in terms of customizability --
even if most of it is done through extensions. Moreover, if you can't tweak it
to your liking, perhaps xfce or i3 or KDE will prove more accommodating...

------
Zardoz84
Meanwhile on KDE I can change all my configuration to my personal tastes
without needing to edit a single text file or doing obscure and magic things
with third party tools.

~~~
c3833174
That's not always a good thing, everytime I've tried a post-plasma KDE version
I've always ended up spending too much time regularly tweaking the whole
setup.

~~~
Zardoz84
I find that the GNOME way of doing this, need a lot more of work that simply
doing : Preferences -> "Change stuff here"

------
sverige
> I have pretty basic needs from my desktop. I do 99% of my work using just
> three programs: a terminal emulator, Emacs, and Firefox. I don’t want a lot
> of bells and whistles in my desktop, and I really just want it to get out of
> the way so I can do my work.

Am I the only one who finds it ironic that TFA starts with this, then spends a
couple of paragraphs talking about how modern Gnome is, then spends a few
pages presenting what looks a lot like a chapter from an old "Removing Windows
XP Annoyances" book?

------
zaarn
I've tried to use Gnome a lot, it's IMO a great desktop but it also has
problems. Personally, I've simply been sitting on XFCE, despite wanting to
switch to Wayland a long time ago merely because XFCE has been proven less
resource intensive on both laptop and desktop...

I do hope there will be a wayland-based XFCE-like Desktop for Linux at some
point...

------
dsr_
That was an awful lot of work compared with "install XFCE".

------
mhd
First time I heard about the user.js feature. That should save me some time
going through umpteen about:config preferences every time I install Firefox
(and it seems I do more and more stuff there, whenever they add a new useless
feature).

------
8fingerlouie
I recently came back to running Linux on the desktop after using Mac OS for a
decade or so, and while the article is interesting from a technical point of
view, it seems like a lot of work with little reward considering that the
needed apps are a command prompt, a text editor and a browser.

I'll just stick with my standard Debian Gnome desktop. It works well, doesn't
get in my way, and i can spare the ~0.5GB RAM for running evolution, tracker,
plugins etc.

~~~
kchr
I think one of the major points is that this configuration is easily
reusable/replayable on another machine, as it also sets up the wanted/unwanted
packages.

------
SkyMarshal
For folks who don't like the idea of a javascript-based DE, ElementaryOS is
worth a look. An Ubuntu variant with a DE built with Vala which is similar to
C# but compiles to C.

[https://elementary.io/](https://elementary.io/)

[https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/Vala](https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/Vala)

------
kbenson
If I was actively using Linux on the desktop still -as I was for well over a
decade- this would have been extremely useful. I always shied away from Gnome
as far too heavy for my tastes, and used a custom built FVWM config. Since my
workflow also consisted of mainly a web browsers, a mail client (now subsumed
by the web browser), and many, many terminals, I really just wanted a single
click to start a terminal, and Ctrl-Alt-{direction} to move virtual desktops
which I devoted to a single task at a time.

For the last few years I've been using Windows 8/10\. It started as a work
software requirement, but as of Windows 10, Microsoft has figured out how to
make Windows feel fairly minimal most of the time. As long as I have a browser
and PuTTY, I'm pretty content. I'm doing my best to ignore what I assume are
some privacy concerns I'll have to deal with at some point in the near future,
but for the time being I'm able to deal with the cognitive dissonance.

------
catern
There's an easier way than using dconf dump twice and looking at the diff: You
can use dconf watch. [http://catern.com/2014/12/21/plain-text-configuration-
gnome....](http://catern.com/2014/12/21/plain-text-configuration-gnome.html)

------
mixmastamyk
Hmm, author doesn't seem to know about dconf-editor to explore available
settings.

That reminds me of why I despise much of what gnome3 has produced however.
Instead of improving the applets and file manager and adding to their anemic
feature set, they are constantly fucking around with the title bars and
removing menus and things. For the same reason I hated 'skinz' in the 90's I
dislike that every app is now a custom snowflake that has to be handled
differently. For example, look at what dconf-editor has become, like the Disks
program---an abomination.

Gnome (all the desktops really) is still not as consistent and integrated as
the Windows 2000 shell was, and is harder to use. IMHO, the only useful
innovation to come out since then has been the "Super-key search," the rest
has been downhill.

~~~
lokedhs
As someone who heavily uses the super key in Emacs, I disagree with you.

It's getting pretty difficult to turn off that feature (is it even possible in
recent versions of Gnome?).

Also, the Super-o shortcut to lock screen rotation (on a compute, really?) is
hardcoded in the window manager and can't be disabled at all. That's really
great when you have APL symbols mapped to it.

~~~
mixmastamyk
Thought emacs used Ctrl?

I use Mate, though gnome3 has infected many of the apps, such as the two
mentioned above. Think you have to enable super-search by opting in to one of
the advance start menus under it.

~~~
lokedhs
Emacs uses Control and Meta. That makes Super a very useful key to map custom
functions to.

~~~
mixmastamyk
Mine still works, just the bare key press that opens the start menu.

~~~
lokedhs
That's true, but when you use the key a lot it often happens that you press it
and then release it. It's very annoying

Also, the hardcoding of super-o is even more annoying.

I also noticed that in recent versions of Gnome, super-s doesn't work anymore.
I have no explanation for that one.

~~~
mixmastamyk
Bummer. Well perhaps Mate is a good choice then. I'm enjoying it though still
a bit lacking compared to Windows 2k, sigh.

------
alex_duf
If anyone uses gnome and github, and happens to follow their github
notifications I made that:

[https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1125/github-
notificat...](https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1125/github-
notifications/)

source code:

[https://github.com/alexduf/gnome-github-
notifications](https://github.com/alexduf/gnome-github-notifications)

------
zeveb
> … my personal feeling is the less Javascript in my life the better.

I couldn't agree more. But I also feel much the same way about GNOME; that's
why I use StumpWM[0]. It doesn't do everything out of the box which GNOME
does, but it's extensible in a dynamic language, which means that it's easy
enough to add most everything.

0: [https://stumpwm.github.io/](https://stumpwm.github.io/)

------
rullopat
I don't understand what's the need to go on with this (probably unstable)
path. I would rather try XFCE or LXQt before trying this.

~~~
matthiasv
Read again. He said he likes the workflow GNOME provides, he just wants to
reduce a bit of the bloat. Maybe, unlike you, he does _not_ want to use a more
traditional desktop …

------
hawski
I expected to see custom compiled version with some code removed. Because
lobotomizing sounds far more drastic than a pat on the hand.

Now that I'm thinking about this it would be something. Maybe profile it to
see unused code after described configuration change. Then remove it and use
Profile Guided Optimization to go further.

------
dajonker
While there is a lot of bloat in gnome, it personally doesn't really bother me
as it doesn't get in my way.

Although I agree it should probably be easier, it's great that it is possible
to cut a lot of unwanted bloat from Gnome. Try that with Windows or MacOS.

------
locusm
I'm very happy on a new T480S running Pop_OS - if any System76 devs pass by
here - thanks!

------
Aelius
PSA: GNOME Software is a frontend to flatpak repositories. It's not a frontend
for your package manager.

Since flatpak provides security benefits, instead of removing Gnome software,
he should have been removing duplicate packages from his package manager.

~~~
Spivak
GNOME Software is a frontend to a lot of things: flatpak repos, your system
package manager, GNOME extensions, firmware updates.

------
amaccuish
The registry on Windows gets tonnes of hate, and mostly rightly so, but I
kinda like dconf. I wish more programs would use it, just one format, and
really easy to programatically change without individual pipelines per config
file format.

------
luord
I agree on a lot of things, but not on the extensions, I have about a dozen
installed that make my desktop much more organized and snappier to use.

Also don't understand the uninstalling totem part, then again I watch a lot of
movies.

------
jeena
On Arch Linux installing GNOME does not install all of the GNOME apps, just
the shell. The rest I only install if I want it. What I like most is their
calendar and their address book.

~~~
bittermang
Switching to Arch was revelatory, and I've been using some form of Linux at
work or home since 2001.

It's hard for me to describe, or quantify. But it's almost like, with a distro
that embraces the Linux-ness of Linux, one that's not trying to be like Mac OS
or Windows, you're able to cut to the heart of your user experience and make
it your own.

Plus, rolling release, bro. I don't need monolithic version releases, I just
have Arch now.

~~~
nvarsj
Arch is insanely stable given it uses rolling updates. I'm not quite sure how
they pull it off. I've had far worse problems with Fedora and Ubuntu, which
sometimes are not even fixable because you can't easily update to the latest
upstream releases (most noticeably with the kernel). On Arch, I run `pacman
-Syu` every month and my system stays up to date with basically no downtime.

~~~
SkyMarshal
Does Arch have anything similar to Ubuntu/Debian's Alternatives System [1][2]?
This is very useful for managing different versions of the same package/s and
I tend to rely on it for a number of things.

[1]:[https://wiki.debian.org/DebianAlternatives](https://wiki.debian.org/DebianAlternatives)
[2]:[http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/precise/man8/update-
alte...](http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/precise/man8/update-
alternatives.8.html)

~~~
nvarsj
You can freeze package versions, and there are also archives of older
packages. But generally most of the repos only have the latest released
packages.

------
conatus
Perhaps tangential but does anyone know if you can run Ableton Live on Linux
using some emulation layer?

This is maybe the one piece of software keeping me from ditching Mac OS X.

~~~
milkmiruku
Here's a current thread regarding Ableton Live registration via Wine -
[https://linuxmusicians.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=18590](https://linuxmusicians.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=18590)
\- apparently it's not the easiest.

Alternatively, Bitwig runs natively, though costs. It's about the only native
software that does the clip launching style of production/performance well.

------
yani
It is a bit of controversal article. There is need for 2 applications a
terminal and a browser. Why do you need gnome for that?

~~~
DocTomoe
I'm using i3. I still keep Gnome around, because from time to time I need to
hold presentations, and randomly appearing and disappearing monitors
(=beamers) is not something i3 deals with gracefully.

~~~
mort96
I use i3 on my laptop, where I routinely connect and disconnect external
displays. I wrote a small program to deal with that:
[http://github.com/mortie/dedaemon](http://github.com/mortie/dedaemon)

That tool also handles input stuff (like setting the keyboard layout when a
keyboard is connected, or setting the mouse speed when a mouse is connected),
and setting the wallpaper (because the wallpaper has to be re-applied when a
display is connected). Here's the config file I personally use:
[https://github.com/mortie/nixConf/blob/master/.dedaemon.hcnf](https://github.com/mortie/nixConf/blob/master/.dedaemon.hcnf)

If you do end up trying it out, feel free to pm me (mort@irc.freenode.net) or
open a github issue if you have any questions or problems.

~~~
InternetOfStuff
Where has this been all my life?

So far I've been making do with shellscripts I call ad-hoc, but dedaemon looks
super convenient.

Thanks for creating it, I'll certainly give it a try!

------
johnchristopher
I refuse to believe this is not satirical. "I have few new needs. Gnome is
cool. I store my config in ansible.".

------
brightball
Article gave me a strong desire to start managing my desktop with Ansible...

~~~
bbeck
I do this with my computers (laptops, desktops, and servers) and while it does
have some drawbacks on the desktop I feel the reproducibility far outweighs
them. Whenever a new version of OS X comes out, I just clean install it on my
machine, run ansible and then have a working environment back up in under an
hour.

------
partycoder
An easier way: try XFCE or another GTK based desktop environment.

------
beguiledfoil
If you want something this simple just use sway...

~~~
lsh
this Sway?
[https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Sway](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Sway)

------
reshie
it's simplified to a fault. it is also too complex to a fault. basically when
you want to do something it does get in the way.

------
dvfjsdhgfv
...or you can just use Mate and save yourself a lot of these troubles.

~~~
sampo
How does Mate do with: Connecting and disconnecting projectors and external
displays on the fly? HiDPI displays?

~~~
alxlaz
> Connecting and disconnecting projectors and external displays on the fly?

It's been doing this fine since back when it was Gnome 2.

> HiDPI displays?

AFAIK, basically, just as well as Gnome 3. They use the same UI toolkit.

------
auslander
> I want my laptop to work correctly when connecting it to external displays
> or projectors without a lot of futzing around. I want vsync to work with my
> monitor out of the box, I want to be able to watch video without tearing,
> and I want a desktop that has first class support for high-DPI displays.

Buy a Mac :) Honestly. The Gnome and systemd became entangled mess with no
chances of getting better, yet they made it into all major distros. Linux
kernel size increased exponentially in last few years, without visible added
value.

But article is real good!

------
synack
Evan I love you

------
ulises314
100% on the same boat as the opening statment, but he lost me at "systemd".

------
JepZ
First I thought 'Fedora?!? seriously???'. Last time I used Fedora (several
years ago) I was pissed off when I had to learn that they didn't support
system upgrades. So with every major release you had to reinstall the whole
system, which is not that much fun.

But it seems they support system upgrades since a few releases now [1]. So
maybe I should try it one day again, but as I fell in love with (stable)
rolling releases, that might still be an issue :-/

[1]:
[https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DNF_system_upgrade](https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DNF_system_upgrade)

~~~
onosendai
I've been using dnf to continuously upgrade my Fedora installation between 24
and 28, and it's worked pretty much flawlessly.

It's gotten to the point that system upgrades are as boring as the regular
stream of updates that you receive daily, the only difference being that every
6 months you get more updates than usual being pushed.

Remember when the first real tool you had to perform system upgrades on Fedora
was called FedUp? It was quite amazing, not to mention unexpected, seeing
Fedora go from being one of the worst distros to upgrade to one of the best.

