Most users are interested in Fedora upgrades. Each release brings improvements, and frequent releases are a hallmark of open source software. Releases of Fedora happen twice a year, and many users take advantage of improvements by upgrading to each new release. There are several methods to do this in Fedora, as outlined on the project wiki.

However, not every user wants to upgrade twice a year. Some users prefer a longer cycle. Their reasons may vary. Some prefer the familiarity of a single release a year at a time. Some have customizations and don’t want to redo them quite as often. For home users and enthusiasts, a long-term release like CentOS is an option.

Some users, however, want a different balance between newer software and more time on a release. For them, upgrades every other release can be a solution. In a recent blog post, Adam Williamson of the Fedora Quality Assurance (QA) team discusses how these upgrades work.

In general, users were expected to upgrade one release at a time. As Adam explains, “If you wanted to run Fedora 21 until it went EOL then go to Fedora 23, you were still supposed to upgrade to Fedora 22 first, then straight to Fedora 23. This has long struck many people as a bit odd, though, and recently we’re taking steps to do something about it.”

Adam theorizes there can be a more supportable, official upgrade across two releases in the future. You can read more about the concept, and what QA is doing about it, here in his blog.