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Many times I have seen people upgrading the packages on their system, and I have noticed that some of them specifically run:

sudo apt-get upgrade

Before running:

sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Is this really necessary? Doesn't running dist-upgrade cover what upgrade does and more? Or is there some real reason to run the upgrade command before the dist-upgrade command?

1 Answers1

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No, it's not necessary and from my experience, I can confirm that.

Everything else is superstition, just as the claim that I must re-start my system when a configuration has been changed. Perhaps you then feel better, but it's not necessary. But that's another story. ;)

From man apt-get

dist-upgrade in addition to performing the function of upgrade, also intelligently handles changing dependencies with new versions of packages

A.B.
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  • Well, there was actually one occasion where I changed a configuration file, I didn't get what I wanted until a restart, which I found rather annoying because it didn't even tell me that it needed a restart! :D –  Sep 09 '15 at 18:21
  • @ParanoidPanda We should examine more closely. =) – A.B. Sep 09 '15 at 18:24
  • Perhaps, if I remember what it was! ;D –  Sep 09 '15 at 18:33
  • Though it is not the question, one should add that apt-get update should be run before apt-get dist-upgrade. It is easy to get confused between all these updates and upgrades. – user68186 Sep 09 '15 at 18:36
  • @user68186: Yes, in fact I think that apt-get should have a built in command that runs update and then dist-upgrade. –  Sep 09 '15 at 18:44
  • @ParanoidPanda http://askubuntu.com/q/672223/367165 – A.B. Sep 09 '15 at 19:40