How can I make apt-get upgrade the kernel, similarly to aptitude?

Question

Installed new Ubuntu Server 12.04 on Windows Azure

After apt-get upgrade, console shows:

The following packages have been kept back:
  linux-image-extra-virtual linux-image-virtual linux-tools linux-virtual
(...)

83 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 4 not upgraded.
Need to get 64.5 MB of archives.
After this operation, 714 kB of additional disk space will be used

And After aptitude upgrade

The following NEW packages will be installed:
  linux-image-3.2.0-32-virtual{a} linux-image-extra-3.2.0-32-virtual{a}
  linux-tools-3.2.0-32{a}
(...)

The following packages are RECOMMENDED but will NOT be installed:
  libglib2.0-data shared-mime-info shared-mime-info:i386
87 packages upgraded, 3 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 103 MB of archives. After unpacking 151 MB will be used.

So there is difference between the two.

Could you please advice what I should choose to upgrade my server? Is there any advantages of upgrading additional packages via aptitude or I should stay with apt-get and upgrade less packages?

Answer 1

According to the apt-get man page:

upgrade is used to install the newest versions of all packages currently installed on the system.

dist-upgrade, in addition to performing the function of upgrade, also intelligently handles changing dependencies with new versions of packages.

When you use aptitude, it automatically use the dependencies of the packages, if you want likely the same results, use apt-get dist-upgrade.

If you want to know the differences between the two, check this post or this one.

Answer 2

open your terminal and type this

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade