up vote 254 down vote favorite
86

What is the difference between apt-get update and apt-get upgrade?

Which should I run first?

Do any of them automatically run the other?

share|improve this question
    
See: askubuntu.com/questions/99033/… What is the difference between apt-get upgrade and apt-get dist-upgrade? – david6 Jan 28 '12 at 22:49
    
Possible duplicate of: askubuntu.com/questions/81585/… OR askubuntu.com/questions/99033/… – david6 Jan 28 '12 at 22:49
3  
It's not a duplicate: this is about the difference between update/upgrade, not about the difference between upgrade/dist-upgrade. – Andrea Corbellini Dec 28 '12 at 12:37
up vote 277 down vote accepted

You should first run update, then upgrade. Neither of them automatically runs the other.

  • apt-get update updates the list of available packages and their versions, but it does not install or upgrade any packages.
  • apt-get upgrade actually installs newer versions of the packages you have. After updating the lists, the package manager knows about available updates for the software you have installed. This is why you first want to update.
share|improve this answer
16  
Keep in mind that most of the times instead of apt-get upgrade what you want to do is apt-get dist-upgrade – fdierre Jan 9 '12 at 23:41
10  
@TravisR Not really. dist-upgrade won't upgrade to a new OS, but will upgrade to a new kernel (common enough) or a different set of dependencies (common enough) or remove dependencies that don't matter after an upgrade (also common). If you're on a home or office system, most of the time you want dist-upgrade, not upgrade. It's if you are upgrading several systems, or one that you need kept in a well-defined state that you'd want upgrade. For "regular" users (their own machine), dist-upgrade is the one to go for. – Jon Hanna Apr 25 '14 at 22:08
    
So do you mean that "apt-get upgrade" will do nothing if not followed by "apt-get update"? If this is so, what is the real use of "apt-get update"? Then why the "update" is not included in "upgrade"? – user22180 Nov 8 '14 at 20:36
2  
then finish up with an apt-get autoremove ! – austin Nov 18 '14 at 18:17
1  
@user22180 that's a very intelligent question. At first glance, it's absurd to separate the methods if both must be called to accomplish the desired function, to actually replace the old packages with the new ones. But you may want to difference between the packages you need to install and the ones you eventually want to upgrade. – JuanRocamonde Jul 4 '15 at 18:35

protected by Eric Carvalho Feb 10 '16 at 12:04

Thank you for your interest in this question. Because it has attracted low-quality or spam answers that had to be removed, posting an answer now requires 10 reputation on this site (the association bonus does not count).

Would you like to answer one of these unanswered questions instead?

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.