Is the Update Manager (or Software Updater) the frontend of apt-get dist-upgrade?
3 Answers
Update-manager is essentially a GUI frontend for apt
, which includes apt-get update
, upgrade
, and dist-upgrade
functionality. Using the Update Manager is more convenient than using apt-get dist-upgrade
, because using this command to upgrade to a new version of your distribution requires the modification of configuration files. There is less room for error using the Update Manager than using apt-get dist-upgrade
.
do-release-upgrade
is a command line tool similar to the Update Manager, which also does not require modification of apt configuration files.
-
1To correct a common misconception:
apt-get dist-upgrade
is not just for upgrading to a new version of ubuntu (it is poorly named).apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade
is a reasonable way to apply day-to-day package updates from the command line and will not upgrade to a new version of ubuntu. For most purposes there is no reason to useapt-get upgrade
at all. Feb 14, 2016 at 18:46
In a way yes. However the Update Manager combines a lot of apt-get
commands that may depend on your update settings.
You can have a better understanding of apt-get
options if you read the AptGet/Howto.Then you can figure out which GUI option correspond to which apt-get
command.
Strictly, Update Manager
, Software Centre
and the apt suite (apt-get
and apt-cache
) are all front-ends to dpkg
so anything that can be done with one can done with the others, but it is usually much easier to use the GUI tools which will also handle editing the config files automaically.
Note that the only dpkg
command that most people use directly is dpkg --configure -a
to fix things up when an install fails.