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-------- Forwarded Message -------- Subject: Re: [LUG] Upgrades Date: Tue, 7 Feb 2017 17:51:31 +0000 From: Neil <barnaby@xxxxxxxxxxxx> To: mr meowski <mr.meowski@xxxxxxxx> On 07/02/17 17:08, mr meowski wrote:
My apologies to the group. When I set out to type my email I absolutely intended to include my distro. Sigh, another senior moment.On 07/02/17 09:00, Neil via list wrote:I have been using Linux for many years, but I still get puzzled about updates to the software. Perhaps someone could help. Is it any wonder that I am confused? If anyone could help me here I would be very grateful. Others on the list may also find it useful.Well the other replies have you got you pretty well covered here but if I may add my two pennies worth... Firstly though, you didn't specify *exactly* what system you're using - I know you use Ubuntu but which version specifically? It makes a considerable difference as 16.04 for example will usually have much more recent packages available than 14.04 in the standard Canonical provided repos.
My current distro is Xubuntu 16.04 LTS.May I also add that I am happy to use a terminal screen as opposed to a GUI. I was brought up on DOS, long before there was such a thing as a GUI.
Thanks for that, in future I will use apt instead of apt-get. I notice you use dist-upgrade instead of just upgrade. Is that important?Every single day pretty much the first thing I do after unlocking my system (it's never turned off) is run an aliased command that does: sudo apt update && sudo apt dist-upgrade Notice the lack of "-get" in the command: modern usage of apt mostly omits that part. If you try running "sudo apt-get update" and "sudo apt update" one after the other in a terminal you'll spot the difference immediately. There's no harm in sticking with the 'old' -get usage but there's also no point in sticking with it either.
Some other handy commands are:
apt-cache policy $PACKAGE-NAME
This will give you the status and source of any given $PACKAGE-NAME.
apt-cache policy | grep http | awk '{print $2 $3}' | sort -u
This provides a neat sorted list of whatever apt sources you have
configured including PPAs. Apt surprisingly doesn't have a native way of
cleanly displaying this unlike yum/dnf/zypper/etc.
Speaking of PPAs, there is no harm in using them: in fact, they are
probably one of the chief draws of using Ubuntu vs Debian. Just be aware
that not all PPAs are created equal. Official or semi-official PPAs are
well curated, frequently updated and very useful indeed to get software
that Canonical either doesn't ship at all or only provides old/rubbish
versions of. Libreoffice is a classic example.
Thanks for the advice.
If you *must* use a GUI tool to interact with system software on a Debian based system, do yourself a favour and install the good old fashioned synaptic tool.
I do use synaptic as my GUI tool for system software.
The last points you asked about are standalone DEB files: avoid these at all cost
Thanks again. I will steer clear of deb files in future. And I will forget about the snapd 'solution' too.
Hope that clears things up a little maybe and gives you at least one rock solid option going forward: as ever, I recommend using the terminal as the UNIX gods intended. It's the fastest, most powerful and flexible and easiest to debug if anything goes wrong. apt update && apt dist-upgrade every single day first thing and all will be well with the world.
Again, as I said above, I am very happy with the terminal. Thanks again, Neil -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG https://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq