Software packages with newer versions are upgraded and none whatsoever are removed.

Dist-upgrade vs upgrade. If youve ever gone to upgrade a Debian- or Ububuntu-based machine you might have been confused as to which command to run. Apt-get upgrade. Its just a new package.

It can be used for solving dependency problems and upgrading your system to the latest kernel version. Read the proposed changes carefully before agreeing. Unlike apt-get upgrade command the apt-get dist-upgrade is proactive and it installs new packages or removes existing ones on its own in order to complete the upgrade.

In the latter some newer packages are installed and some are removed to satisfy certain dependencies. Using dist-upgrade instead of full-upgrade probably wont hurt a healthy system. I found that I can do this by running the command.

Or from Debian Buster to the next Debian release. This command will upgrade too but during the upgrade there will be some prompts related to package configuration. The original purpose of dist-upgrade is to migrate between releases of Debian roughly equivalent to Ubuntus do-release-upgrade So there is a bit less protection from unanticipated consequences.

A deep dive into the difference between command line apt-get and command line apt for updating and upgrading with update upgrade dist-upgrade and full-upgrade commands. When a new kernel is installed with dist-upgrade thats not a new release of Ubuntu. First I ran the command dist-upgrade to upgrade my packages.

Apt upgrade can then act on this information and upgrade all installed packages to their latest versions. Given that I am starting with a clean system I wanted to update to Ubuntu 1604. Enabling dist-upgrade behavior for unattended-upgradesHelpful.