Update vs Upgrade

[krakadoros]

What is the difference between Update and Upgrade ? Should i do both ?

 

[Condobloke]

G'day krakadoros, Welcome to Linux.org

Which distro are you running?

If Linux Mint, which version, DE, ?

Generally it is a safe approach to follow whatever the Update Manager presents.

 

[Brickwizard]

sudo apt update ...updates the package manager
sudo apt upgrade then upgrades any old packages for suitable new ones
sudo apt distribution upgrade is offered by some distributions as a safe minimal upgrade [some distributions may also offer sudo apt safe-upgrade]
sudo apt full upgrade will upgrade all packages [this can cause problems of components then not working]

you can also string these commands for most Debian based distros, sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y

when you finish running any upgrade, then run sudo autoremove

 

[APTI]

in the world of fedora,

update means bring in the newer versions of the current version of the OS
upgrade means to move to the next version of the OS

so if I was on fedora 40, update would get me the latest on fedora 40. if I did upgrade it would take me to fedora 41

 

[CaffeineAddict]

apt update updates package cache (gets info on what is to be upgraded but does not upgrade anything yet)
apt upgrade does the actual upgrade based on updated package cache from previous step.

If you don't update then upgrade will not work as expected.

 

[krakadoros]

Thanks everybody, especially @APTI for the example.