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Often I have a shell open already and I notice the software updater is telling me there are updates. To save me the time on extra mouse clicks, I want to just update via the shell. But if I just do "sudo apt-get update", the software updater still shows me pending updates and this is also the case even after rebooting the system - if I'm not mistaken.

So, if I want to do the same thing as the software updater in the shell, what commands do I have to call?

sudo apt-get update? sudo apt-get upgrade? sudo apt-get dist-upgrade? All of them?

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apt-get update only refreshes the available packages lists. apt-get upgrade does the actual upgrade. apt-get dist-upgrade, unlike apt-get upgrade has the ability to install or delete packages (that's what the GUI call an "intelligent upgrade". Normally, since dependencies aren't supposed to change during a release's lifecycle, for day-to-day upgrades, apt-get update followed by apt-get upgrade is enough. You should run apt-get dist-upgrade only when some packages are held back.

All that (and far more) is explained in apt-get manual page (man apt-get).

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