2

I am running Ubuntu MATE 18.04.1 x64 and noticed this today.

Ran Software Updater, it updated just one package. Then I opened up a terminal and ran sudo apt update and saw that updates to three additional packages were available.

What method should I be using to keep my machine up to date?

2

4 Answers 4

3

Update manager does update all of the software, but I can see how you got that impression.

How upgrades work:

  • Your package manager or updater downloads a list of software available. The updater does that automatically every day (or whatever time you configured).
  • Based on that list, it then shows what updates are available.

In particular, if it downloaded that list automatically less than one day ago, it might only show upgrades which have already been available yesterday. Manually calling apt update or clicking the update button will download a new list right now. After that both the updater and apt upgrade will show you the newer upgrades as well.

1
  • This definitely makes sense and I tried it on another machine that I haven't updated lately. Thank you very much.
    – RogerH
    Sep 28, 2018 at 18:17
0

You should try the following steps in order:

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
sudo apt dist-upgrade

If sudo apt dist-upgrade runs into some error, try using sudo apt dist-upgrade --fix-missing

0

To update your Ubuntu system, you can first run this command:

sudo apt-get update

This command will resynchronize the package files from their sources. Basically, this command gives you a list of available packages and their locations.

Next, you can perform either of the two commands below:

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

To determine which one to use, stability is the main factor to consider. The upgrade command will only install the newest versions of all packages currently installed on your system, meaning that this command WILL NOT remove currently installed packages, or install packages that aren't already retreived and installed. This is the more stable of the two options. The dist-upgrade command is more agressive, in that it has a built in means of dealing with changing dependencies: in other words, this option has the ability to remove packages. While this means that there is a much higher potential of breaking something, this command won't keep any packages back like the regular upgrade command. In a sense, this makes dist-upgrade a more "complete" way of upgrading your packages, though not without its risks.

0

To fully upgrade your system, run these two commands:

sudo apt update

sudo apt full-upgrade -y

The first one updates the list of available packages, the second one upgrades the packages. The difference between upgrade and full-upgrade is that full-upgrade may intelligently remove packages in order to do more updates, while upgrade is a "safe" upgrade.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .