There are times when Ubuntu or Xubuntu needs to be updated without a GUI. On servers, this is a standard update procedure, but for personal computer users, this method can be useful. For example, if for some reason a graphical utility is not available or you want to forcefully check and install updates. To execute all commands, you need to start the terminal.
Necessary
- An account with the rights to run programs as root via sudo. Typically, the first Ubuntu account created has this privilege.
- The computer must be connected to the internet.
- During the update, a significant amount of data is downloaded from the Internet, so it is advisable that your Internet connection be charged at an unlimited tariff.
Instructions
Step 1
Start a terminal emulator. For example, in Xubuntu this program is called Terminal.
Step 2
The first step is to update the list of available packages. This is done with the sudo apt-get update command. The first time you run sudo, it will ask you to enter the password for the current account to confirm that the command will be executed as root. Subsequent launches within the same session will be performed without asking for a password.
Step 3
After the package upgrade is complete, issue the sudo apt-get upgrade command to upgrade all installed software packages.
Step 4
If the apt package manager finds available updates, it will display a list of updated packages and ask if you want to continue. Press Y to start the process of downloading and installing updates. Please note that not all packages will be updated after running this command.
Step 5
Depending on the speed of your Internet connection, PC performance and the number of updates, the update process can take quite a long time - up to several hours. Be patient. As a rule, on an average PC, even the largest update takes 15-20 minutes. When finished, make sure the update went smoothly and restart your computer with sudo reboot or otherwise.
Step 6
After rebooting, start a terminal emulator and enter the command sudo apt-get dist-upgrade. This command will upgrade packages that have not been upgraded with sudo apt-get upgrade due to unresolved dependencies. All actions are the same as in step 4. When finished, restart your computer in the same way. This completes the update procedure.
Step 7
The above steps allow you to update packages within the current distribution that canonical releases at 6 month intervals. And once every 2 years in April, a long-term support distribution kit (LTS) is released. I recommend that you only use LTS distributions in your work. However, for both intermediate distributions and LTS, you must use the sudo do-release-upgrade command to upgrade one distribution to a newer one. This is a wizard for updating to the latest available distribution. Note that by default this wizard can only upgrade an LTS distribution to the next LTS distribution. After running the command, follow the instructions on the screen and read all messages carefully.
