The Fedora Project has announced that Fedora 31 will reach its end of life on 24 November 2020. The announcement comes just weeks after the launch of Fedora 33 which included GNOME 3.38 and BTRFS as the default file system.
After next Tuesday, Fedora 31 will stop receiving vital security updates leaving your system open to exploitation as new vulnerabilities are discovered. To make sure that your system stays protected, you should upgrade to a later version; to do this, simply open Software and go to the Updates tab, there you should see a bigger banner offering you a Fedora upgrade.
Once you begin the upgrade with this method, the required files will be downloaded and then your system will ask to reboot to install the files in a similar fashion to how normal updates work. When the upgrade is complete, the system will automatically reboot into the new release.
In the Fedora documentation, it says:
“Fedora strongly discourages running an end-of-life release on any production system, or any system connected to the public internet. You should never allow a production Fedora deployment to reach end-of-life in the first place.”
If you do not want to upgrade your system, you also have the option of downloading a fresh copy of Fedora 33 which was released last month. Whether you upgrade your system or do a clean install, ensure that you’ve backed up all of your important files.