Updating Linux

How to update most distros

One of the main advantages of linux over windows is that the update process can be much much easier and smoother than on windows. I’ve had Windows unexpectedly restart in the middle of a movie, while I was sleeping, while downloading files and just about any other inconveinient time.

So if you have been using pretty much any distro of linux then you have propbably performed and update.

Debian has sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade.
Fedora has sudo dnf upgrade.
Arch has pacman -Syu.

If you trust windows package manager then you can even do winget upgrade --all. It also happens to be aliased as winget update --all, incase that feels more comfortable.

So what is the difference between an upgrade and an update?

As you can see, Debian has an update and upgrade command. Windows aliased update to upgrade. What is the difference and why is it not the same thing?

Debian’s package manager apt has a 3 part update process. You update the package manager’s information on the packages with update, then use that to update the packages themselves with upgrade, and finally you tidy up unneeded packages with autoremove.

update (apt-get(8))
    update is used to download package information from all configured sources. Other commands operate on this
    data to e.g. perform package upgrades or search in and display details about all packages available for
    installation.

Update is their verbage to update the package manager’s knowlege of the packages you have installed. It updates the package manager, not the packages.

upgrade (apt-get(8))
    upgrade is used to install available upgrades of all packages currently installed on the system from the
    sources configured via sources.list(5). New packages will be installed if required to satisfy
    dependencies, but existing packages will never be removed. If an upgrade for a package requires the
    removal of an installed package the upgrade for this package isn't performed.

Upgrade is used when you want to upgrade/update your packages. It installs the new version of the package and grabs any new dependencies. It doesn’t remove any outdated or unused dependenies however so you may want to run autoremove.

autoremove (apt-get(8))
    autoremove is used to remove packages that were automatically installed to satisfy dependencies for other
    packages and are now no longer needed as dependencies changed or the package(s) needing them were removed
    in the meantime.

    You should check that the list does not include applications you have grown to like even though they were
    once installed just as a dependency of another package. You can mark such a package as manually installed
    by using apt-mark(8). Packages which you have installed explicitly via install are also never proposed for
           automatic removal.

Autoremove removes dependency packages you don’t need anymore. If the package is an app that you don’t want to have removed you can mark it, or just reinstall it to keep it.

Back in the day, when I started using fedora, the package manager was YUM. YUM, at least in fedora 8, used update to perform package updates and upgrade to update the os and new packages after downloaded the new package lists. Now upgrade and update are synonyms and update is just aliased to upgrade. Confusing, right? Don’t worry about it. It’s simple enough nowadays.

The advantage

Like we said before, linux doesn’t usually hit you with the forced restarts and pesky popups. That being said, updates can be very important for security reasons as they carry patches to security holes and fixes to bugs.

A more modern advantage of linux updates is that you don’t get advertisements for products from the maker of the OS with every update. No Microsoft, I don’t want to sign up for 365 for 50% off. It should be free to make up for how bad their OS has been lately.

Microsoft’s version

Some of the changes to the windows terminal like the addition of WSL, the new terminal app, and aliasing and accepting more linux syntax makes Windows a little more bearable in the command line. Winget is another tool that makes Windows a little better for automation than it once was. Microsoft made their own package manager, winget, in order to compete in the IT space.

Using winget update --all --silent will run the command without popping up installer windows and whatnot. That’s right, popups. Winget will try to run the installer instead of just installing. Windows doesn’t usually handle packages like linux does. For most distros you hava a package manager that installs all of the software. Of course it would make sense for the same package manager to update the software it installed. In Windows we use separate installers. In fact, there are a few different type of installers. There are .msi and .msix files that install the program. There are also portable apps that don’t require installation. Either way, how do we now control the installation? We download and run the installer and automate the process.

So you can update apps easily but the OS itself will still give you the hard rebooting, advertisement pushing, classic Microsoft updates.