How to Upgrade Templates and apps within successfully & Standalone OS Upgrades

stonehedge · December 23, 2025, 11:26pm

I have a sys-vpn Mullvad Standalone qube. I’m not sure how to upgrade OS to fedora 42 since 41 is obsolete now. Can’t use template switcher on these Standalone Qubes as well which makes more difficult

When i template switched to debian 13 from debian 12 my apps in that won’t open. Is that because the debian template is clean slate since new to my system? Just seems like a pain to have to download apps to new templates every time. There isn’t an in place tool to transfer the applications automatically to the new templates?

And do you just uninstall the old templates once everything switched? Confused as a new user.

Also any way to extend from laptop to two other monitors. Seems like it recognizes the two monitors connected but it just mirrors the one extension. Can’t have the other monitor be an independent extension like on normal computers that’d be great to have if anyone knows how to configure.

Upgraded to 4.3 and seems really smooth. Everything good there now just need to upgrade these other things. Thanks for all help!

kenosen · December 24, 2025, 1:35am

You could try my script here:

github.com/kennethrrosen/qubes-template-upgrade

qvm-template-upgrade

main

#!/usr/bin/python3
#
# Qubes OS Template Upgrade Script
# Supports Fedora and Debian Templates
# https://www.kennethrrosen.cloud
#
# Copyright (C) 2024 by Kenneth R. Rosen
#
# This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
# modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License; 
# as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2
# of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
#
# This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
# but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
# MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
# GNU General Public License for more details.
#
# You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
# along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software

This file has been truncated. show original

It’s an adaptation of the official documentation here (for Debian-based templates):

And for Fedora-based templates:

Always remember to backup your qubes/VMs first.

parulin · December 24, 2025, 7:43am

That’s not the official URL: https://doc.qubes-os.org

kenosen · December 24, 2025, 12:08pm

Thanks! Have updated

stonehedge · December 27, 2025, 2:15pm

to be honest i have zero how to edit the code for fedora qubes so i think ill try and upgrade the standalone fedora qubes with the documentation on the qubes website. maybe its just one block of code and thats why it looks overwhelming where as the qubes website has it broken up. im not sure. i appreciate the response and the links. thanks

stonehedge · December 27, 2025, 2:33pm

@parulin @kenosen is this all i have to run in my VPN qube to update it in place? want it based on same xfce template so no compatibilty issues and lightweight and runs well.

sudo dnf --releasever=42 distro-sync --best

I dont want to delete the current set up of the old cube and i don’t want to clone the template since i did a clean install from the template manager of fedora 42 for other normal appvm qubes. for the standalone qubes just want to update them to newest debian or fedora template. don’t have any whonix standalone at moment but it’d be good to know how to do that too. Just use the similar debian qubes OS update commands in the terminal of the standaloneVM to update and that’s it or I’m underestimating the difficulty here?

is it easier as a beginner to manually upgrade the template in each qube appvm or just to install the apps you had within in the new template once you switch it? i dont have that many apps in each qube

kenosen · December 27, 2025, 3:49pm

Code doesn’t need to be edited. It will intelligently know whether it’s upgrading Fedora or Debian and will also walk you through the update.

stonehedge · December 29, 2025, 11:46pm

what do you mean the code doesn’t have to be edited? and im still not upgraded. having a hard time completing the sys-vpn upgrade

and should i upgrade the cloned fedora 41 template and do the upgrading work inside of that or the terminal of the sys-vpn since it’s a standalone qube?