Get-apt update

Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. What does "sudo apt-get update" do? Ask Question. Asked 9 years, 1 month ago. Active 5 months ago. Viewed 1. I am wondering what sudo apt-get update does? What does it update? Improve this question. Pandya Elysium Elysium Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. Improve this answer. Do we always need to run sudo apt-get update command whenever we install packages? What's the disadvantage if we don't do so? JohnnyQ If you do not run that command then you may get an out-of-date package installed.

So I'm assuming it's really no that necessary especially if you are just using basic packages with basic commands that don't get updated usually. Problem in my situation is that apt-get update takes a while, internet here is still primitive. JohnnyQ, if your apt-get update is slow, then your apt-get dist-upgrade will also be slow, so that's not really an argument not to do apt-get update first.

By the way, "apt" stands for Advanced Packaging Tool wiki. Something I learned the other day, thought I'd share. Show 3 more comments. For example, apt-get --help sudo apt-get update essentially has three parts: sudo performs the following command with super-user root capabilities.

For example sudo apt-get install guake would install the Guake terminal as it is currently listed in my computer's local software lists. TheWanderer 19k 12 12 gold badges 47 47 silver badges 63 63 bronze badges.

Alex Alex 1, 6 6 gold badges 16 16 silver badges 28 28 bronze badges. If you don't care about the success of the first command, use ; instead. Just FYI ; — teewuane. If you run an Ubuntu or Debian based operating system, based on a fixed release cycle, you should use upgrade.

For example Ubuntu The idea behind a fixed release cycle is that software versions stay the same and you only get security fixes. Therefore, it will not be necessary to actually remove a package, when upgrading installed software packages. For the examples in this article, I run Ubuntu Budgie Consequently, I will use upgrade. To start the upgrade operation of your installed software packages, run the following command from the terminal:.

Before apt starts the actual software upgrade procedure, it first presents you with all the details:. Press y to proceed with the actual software upgrade operation. After starting the upgrade, you can follow its progress:. Some software packages require a system reboot to complete the update. For example an update to the Linux kernel itself. How do you know if your system requires a reboot after the update? If this file exists, then your system requires a reboot.

To find out if this file exists, you can run the cat command on this file. If this file exists and your system requires a reboot after running sudo apt upgrade , the command output looks like:. If your system does not require a reboot after running sudo apt upgrade , the file is not available. In this case the command output looks like:.

How to reboot your Ubuntu system from the terminal? You can achieve the system restart by running this command from the terminal:. Sometimes software packages remain on your system, even when your system no longer needs them. For example a software package that was installed as a dependency and you manually uninstalled the dependent software package.

Kernel updates are another example. The new kernel requires a reboot to activate. This means that your system still needs the old kernel, until you rebooted your system. To complete the update of your Ubuntu system, you could remove those software packages that your system no longer needs.

Apart from the apparent differences between commands, apt also introduced changes to the output design. Along with updating your local repository, the update command now includes an additional line displaying the number of packages that should be upgraded. There is a difference between updating and upgrading packages on your system. Therefore, this novelty serves as a useful reminder to upgrade the required packages.

Once the output displays the number of packages that can be upgraded, you can prompt the package manager to see a list of these packages. Run the apt list --upgradable command, and the output shows the specified list. Finally, the apt command added a progress bar displaying the upgrade process.

This is a simple yet useful addition that gives the user more information about the given process. Although apt commands replace commonly used apt-get and apt-cache functions, they are not backward compatible with all of them. You cannot always replace the older package managers with apt. In the table below, see the apt command for any given function, as well as which command it replaces.

Note: If you need a one-page reference sheet with commands, you can use our downloadable Linux commands cheat sheet. Apart for simplifying existing commands, apt has a couple of its own. They were added to fulfill the needed command functions listed below. This term is used to get administrative privileges so that we can install and remove software from our computer. Usually, sudo commands are followed by a password request, this is a security measure to prevent malware from getting automatically installed on our computers.

To understand what command and sub-commands mean, you can think of the main command as an app and the subcommand as a button inside that app. So in essence, you are asking your computer to open the apt-get app and push the button named update! APT stands for Advanced Packaging Tool which is a tool that is used to manage software in our system and apt-get is the software used to communicate this APT software management tool.

If you are interested to learn more about how software packages are managed in Linux I highly recommend reading the article in the link below. The kernel is a special software that takes all the available hardware resources and virtualizes and manages them. The software packages are typically applications that we run which can make use of these hardware resources by requesting access to them through the kernel. Examples of software packages can include application software like text editors, word processors, etc.

The content of the packages managed by these package managers involves the following 4 main components. This is the next question we must address. Repositories or repos for short are basically a place where verified packages are stored for easy retrieval and installation.

They can be online like the APT repository or they can be on a local folder or a DVD where you have a special collection of software that you need. You can have several repositories from which you can download and install these packages. These can be. This is a list of packages available for installing on a given distro.

This list is maintained by your Linux machine. The information in this list usually includes the locations of various repositories from which software can be installed. These locations are usually on the internet. You can view and edit this list the same way you can view any other text files using one of your favorite text editors like vs-code, gedit, nano or vim.