linuxgeek: [LINUX_Newbies] Re: Linux Updates

--- In LINUX_Newbies@yahoogroups.com, "highskywhy@..." wrote:
>
>
> good morning
> Di Mär 05 09:09:36 2013
> thank You for help
>
> > sudo apt-get update && dist upgrade
>
> You got the command a little bit wrong. It should read:
>
> $ sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
> *
> Question:
> How often do I have to say: Sudo?
>

You have to say sudo every time you want execute a command with root permissions. Your sudo password gets cached for a certain amount of time (I do not know for how long, will look that one up later on), so you do not have to enter it repeatedly.

Personally, I don't use sudo, but switch to ROOT user instead.
That would be:
$ su -

su means switch user and when not providing a user name after it, you become ROOT. You have to provide the root password in order to gain root permissions permanently (For as long as you are logged in in that shell). The hyphen - after su means that you get the same PATH environment like ROOT, even though you started as a regular user when typing su -
That is important as the normal user may not execute certain commands which do not lie in her/his PATH environment. Try executing /sbin/fdisk -l. Although you are allowed to use fdisk without root permission the path /sbin is not available for you. Do not ask me what the rationale is behind this security? feature. Security by obfuscation?

To me using sudo is not safer than becoming ROOT in the first place. You can break your system either way. I use a ROOT-terminal, you would find that somewhere in the application menu (If you have GNOME-Terminal installed) under "Accessories" or "Zubehör". I changed the appearance for my ROOT-terminal to a blue background, so I visually get reminded that everything I do in this shell is done with admin rights and may break my system.
Well, that's just my point of view.

> The dist-upgrade option only makes sense when you have changed the
> repository sources to the newer release of Xubuntu.
> *
> This I do not understand.
> I am using here Xubuntu now 13.04

Which version do you want to upgrade to? It seems you're using a pre-release version, as the new (X)Ubuntu 13.04 won't come out until sometime in April this year. I do not think there is much you can upgrade to?

> Until there was Pangoline there was an Update Center
> so I could update
> 12.4 to 12.10 then 13.04
> but now there is no update center.
> There is an orange button
> offering:
> show update
> install updates
> look for updates
> start synaptic
>
> Is the button right to use:
> install updates
> or
> look for updates
> ?

In case you want to update your system and install new package versions do "look for updates" first (This should execute the command 'sudo apt-get update') and then "install updates" ('sudo apt-get upgrade')

I think you can do a dist-upgrade with Synaptic, but I don't use that, prefer the commandline by now, so I'm not sure.

>
> > Second question:
> > What does update do?
>
> Update contacts the servers configured in your repository list (Files in
> /etc/apt/apt.conf) and looks whether any new packages or newer versions
> are available. It updates the file
> '/var/lib/dpkg/status' with the package lists found on the servers. That
> is important since apt will only let you search for and install new
> packages when it can find them in the local file.
> *
> Sorry
> my question was:
> Why are there so many updates.
> Example.
> Every 9 days I do now update
> siducion and xubuntu.
> Most times 30 minutes and more is working the update.
> Hundreds of files are downloaded and installed.
> So the producers of Linux do so much work to update
> Kernel or what else?
> Because there is a lot of new software every week.
> Does update also update Gimp Firefox and all the other tools?
>

From the distance is hard to diagnose why your updating takes so long. But, updating/upgrading Siduction only every 9 days means that a lot of packages will get upgraded and thus have to be downloaded, so no wonder. It's based on Debian Unstable, and when I had Debian Unstable installed here I did an update/upgrade every day. So as to quicken up the process.

An Upgrade will get you newer version of Firefox or Gimp, say, when a newer version is available in the repositories. If not, then no. With most Linux distributions you are dependent on what the repositories provide and if there is not latest Firefox available for your Ubuntu version then bad luck. Although for Ubuntu there is option of PPAs (Personal Package Archives) which in some cases give you access to newer package versions.

Kernel updates are rather rare on Ubuntu. Most of the time only minor version steps are taken. As long as all the hardware works, I would not install a newer kernel version manually. Why fix a system that ain't broke. The advantages & additional features of the newest kernel are generally not relevant to regular desktop users. And with Ubuntu you have quite up-to-date kernel versions.

>
> Have a look at:
>
> $ view /var/lib/dpkg/status
> *
> Thank You.
>
>
> Regards
> Sophie
>