Today's article is about upgrading Ubuntu (and others) from the terminal.

[KGIII]

I'm still not up to snuff. I'll get there. Getting older seems to mean these things take longer and longer to get over them. Still, I meet my obligations! Or at least try to...

Upgrade Ubuntu From The Terminal • Linux Tips

Today's article will show how to update and upgrade Ubuntu from the terminal. Of course, this will work on any system that uses apt.

linux-tips.us

I'm sure I missed something. Ah well... Feedback is awesome, but please be gentle - I'm old and infirm!

In fact I'm so out of whack, I had to go in and figure out why it didn't publish automatically at 13:30. (I forgot to hit the publish button.)

 

[captain-sensible]

What i like about Arch and its package management is that there is basically packages from repo using pacman and packages from AUR, but even with AUR doing it makepkg way, you still end up using sudo pacman -U to install a makepkg created .zst package.

Unfortunately for me I have Mint uma on my sons laptop. I just updated using "g" and again "g" on using aptitude gui menu

So you have apt-get , you have apt and it seems even om Mint 20.2 uma aptitude still works. Its like package management is run by a committee and then there is a subcommittee that the committee doesn't know about.

Now vaguely my memory sudo aptitude safe-upgrade is useful in that it updates but doesn't remove packages that you might want or might need.

Apart from that what is the place of aptitude on todays Mint 20.2 that apt or apt-get can't do ?

is that your next article ?

 

[captain-sensible]

I'm still not up to snuff.

Have you heard the expression don't wear your coat when you're indoors, or you won't feel the benefit when you go outside; well more leg pulling obviously... but i think i saw you said you were drinking rum and were not ill ? No ..rum is for when you have a cold or something then you drink it !

 

[KGIII]

Have you heard the expression don't wear your coat when you're indoors, or you won't feel the benefit when you go outside; well more leg pulling obviously...

I'm improving. I'll survive. Only the good dye young, so I'm pretty sure I'm technically immortal.

 

[KGIII]

is that your next article ?

No. I haven't actually written the next one. But, that's not the next one.

I have a 'holy crap' article and some ramblings when I was really intoxicated.

I try to keep some ahead, but haven't for the past few articles. It's all good.

 

[Linuxembourg]

The article doesn't mention the removal and re-installation of non Ubuntu repo (or whatever) apps, which is what I read is the "correct" way on the Debian forum. Although I did it the simple way as the article instructs and everything worked fine.

Is the removal/re-installation step really necessary, and/or is it distro specific?

 

[captain-sensible]

i did read something about disabling PPA being somewhere

 

[KGIII]

The article doesn't mention the removal and re-installation of non Ubuntu repo (or whatever) apps, which is what I read is the "correct" way on the Debian forum. Although I did it the simple way as the article instructs and everything worked fine.

Is the removal/re-installation step really necessary, and/or is it distro specific?

No, no the article doesn't. Those aren't the subject of the article, so of course it doesn't mention those things! More accurately: That information is suitable for another article, one about upgrading to a new version (such as from 20.04 to 22.04).

I'll eventually do an article about upgrading to a new version.

If you're upgrading an Ubuntu flavor to a new version, the process will disable PPAs that you've added. It won't remove software, just the PPAs. When it's done upgrading to a new version, you can then add the PPAs back if they're set up to work with the new version.

The reason it disables the PPAs/third party repositories is because those repos may not be properly configured for the new version.

 

[KGIII]

Also, I could probably make that more clear in the article. "Note: This isn't about upgrading to a new version of Ubuntu, such as with dist-upgrade. This is about continuing to upgrade your software on your current distro version to maintain it between full upgrades to new versions."

Also, before upgrading to a new version they want you to run update and upgrade.

 

[captain-sensible]

well doesn't g & g again using aptitude do that ?

 

[KGIII]

I'm not sure what you're asking, but no you can't 'sudo apt update' and then 'sudo apt upgrade' to a new distro version. Today, there's 'full-upgrade' which (I've never tried it) should upgrade you to a new version and there's the ages-old 'dist-upgrade' that is what I'm more familiar with.

I should probably do a 'full-upgrade' from a VM to see how it actually works.

 

[guiverc]

I'll throw in my two cents.

I rarely use `apt upgrade` myself; almost always using `apt full-upgrade`. It doesn't release-upgrade you to a later release (`do-release-upgrade` or `update-manager` perform that function in Ubuntu), but it will bump you from 20.04.3 to 20.04.4 for example; ie. the same release but a later point/upgrade level.

From `man upgrade` I get

full-upgrade (apt-get(8))
           full-upgrade performs the function of upgrade but will remove currently installed packages if this is needed to
           upgrade the system as a whole.

ie. `apt upgrade` will not remove packages; letting those still sit in the queue, along with whatever upgrade package that required the removal of the other package, ie. `apt full-upgrade` gives you more control as the removal of packages may cause issues for some application (particularly on servers).

`apt upgrade` is roughly equivalent to `apt-get upgrade`
`apt=get dist-upgrade` was replaced by `apt full-upgrade` (though its not the same; so for now `apt dist-upgrade` still exists; despite no mention of it in the man pages).

Likely of no value; but the command I use to upgrade packages on my system (three+ times a day) is (copied from my terminal)

  sudo apt update; sudo apt full-upgrade ; sudo apt autoclean; sudo apt autoremove; neofetch

(if you're wondering why three times a day; b/c I sit on the development release so upgrades occur rather regularly and I find it an easy way to monitor what's changing)

 

[KGIII]

Likely of no value; but the command I use to upgrade packages on my system (three+ times a day) is (copied from my terminal)

I do similar, but it's aliased to 'update' and I'm not even on a dev release. Well, I have a dev release VM but that's as close as I get.

Because of the way I've gone up through, I've never had the chance to do a 'full-upgrade' to a new release. It's just a matter of timing with upgrading hardware and then the last LTS requiring a clean install. So, those aren't in my notes yet.

 

[anneranch]

The problem with "versions upgrade " is - one expects improvement..After running 21.10 upgrade overnight what is most noticeable are STUPID / cute (?) changes in desktop layout and even stupider changes in names.
Apparently most "coders" still take the least painful way to "solve" the issue - some of them may read the "Inmates are running the asylum".

 

[anneranch]

Here is (my) silly analogy.
I seldom "FULLY UPGRADE" my hammer.
I usually loose it first ...
Daily "update / upgrade"of OS tells much about quality
of the 'TOOL" in the first place.

And OS IS A TOOL.

 

[wizardfromoz]

@anneranch

Daily "update / upgrade"of OS tells much about quality
of the 'TOOL" in the first place.

Maybe you did not read

(if you're wondering why three times a day; b/c I sit on the development release so upgrades occur rather regularly and I find it an easy way to monitor what's changing)

Wizard

 

[captain-sensible]

@KGIII even when your not up to snuff your brains probably better then mine ; certainly at the moment. I haven't used any Debian derivative for quite a few years until recently .

So to summarize your article was about upgrading to a minor point release ? Upgrading to a major release is something different and i've seen comments like " i will do a clean install.. at that point .." but surely Arch does that almost every other week so I should be able to do major upgrade as well from cli ?

Now on clems blog https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=4111 I see mention of "usrmerge" on the command line .

For next upgrade from uma 20.2 to 20.3 , do i still need to run usermerge ?

 

[f33dm3bits]

Upgrading to a major release is something different and i've seen comments like " i will do a clean install.. at that point .." but surely Arch does that almost every other week so I should be able to do major upgrade as well from cli ?

Yeah I have seen comments like that too and find those weird comments because in general with minor releases it's to be expected to upgrade without reinstalling your system and with major upgrades some distributions support going from one major version to the next and others don't. Even though some support upgrading from one major version to the next, they still recommend doing a fresh install because things are more likely to break when going from one major version to the next.

 

[captain-sensible]

yeah also i realize post is about Ubuntu and i'm talking about Mint

 

[Deleted member 128018]

yeah also i realize post is about Ubuntu and i'm talking about Mint

No it says "Ubuntu (and others) from the terminal".