0

First off, I've not done much with linux, so I may need things explained as though I'm 5 (for example, I don't know where to find what version I'm running).

Background:

I've had my laptop for over a year and not updated it. Under Activities > Software > Updates, it said I had 22 updates, OS updates and the other 21 were applications. When I tried to click download, it just said:

Unable to download updates:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:

... and no, it didn't have any packages following!

I did some googling, and found a helpful article. I was able to use the

sudo apt-get upgrade

to update all the 21 things besides the OS.

However

sudo apt-get update

just gives me the following (that I had to type, because apparently Ctrl+c doesn't work?):

Hit:1 http://security.debian.org/debian-security bullseye-security InRelease<br />
Hit:2 http://deb.debian.org/debian bullseye InRelease<br />
Hit:3 http://deb.debian.org/debian bullseye-updates InRelease<br />
Reading package lists... Done

So I'm not sure what it was supposed to do, because there are 35 or so things listed under OS updates in the Activities > Software > Updates place. Here is a sample: bc, cups, cups-<a lot>, ghostscript, lib<many things>, linux-headers-<3 items>, linux-image-5.10.0-27-amd64, linux-image-amd64, poppler-utils, ssl-cert, task-<4 items>, tasksel, tasksel-data

In my googling, I did find that there are stable vs testing things, and I'm not interested the testing ones, so what the links (hit 1, 2, and 3) take me to is a bit overwhelming.

Questions:

  1. Is what showed up for sudo apt-get update what always happens? Or did it do that because of the "packages with unmet dependencies"?
  2. Is the sudo apt-get telling me I have version bullseye, or that I need to upgrade to bullseye?
  3. The main question: How do I get it updated?
AdminBee
  • 22,803
IamBatman
  • 3

2 Answers2

2

  1. apt-get update refreshes local copies of repository indexes, it doesn’t touch packages at all. So the output you’re getting is normal.

  2. The output says you’re tracking the Bullseye repositories, which means you’re running Bullseye. (This isn’t a strict correlation, but in your case we can assume the implication.)

  3. To actually upgrade your system, you need to run apt-get upgrade (or apt upgrade, which will give you nicer output with a progress bar). You mention you’ve run that already, so there’s something preventing a full upgrade, but determining what would require more details. Running apt upgrade instead of apt-get upgrade might help, because it will install any new packages required for the upgrade (see apt full-upgrade vs apt upgrade redundancy for details). If that still doesn’t fully upgrade your system, you could try apt full-upgrade, which is usually only needed when upgrading to a new release of Debian; be careful with it because it will remove packages if it thinks it needs to (it will ask you to confirm before it actually goes ahead).

Stephen Kitt
  • 434,908
  • Thank you for your answer. Using 'apt upgrade' took care of most of the packages. However, 'libayatana-appindicator3-1' was "kept back" The software screen shows that package and 'libappindicator3-1'. That package has 0.4.92-7 off to the right, and the one that was "kept back" has 0.5.5-2-> 0.5.5-2+deb11u2 to the right. This is a significant improvement though. – IamBatman Jan 15 '24 at 15:19
  • OK, that’s the source of your problem — libappindicator3-1 was removed before Debian 11 was released. If you want to be able to upgrade everything, you need to determine whether that package is still needed, and remove it if it isn’t. (If something does still need it, you’ll have to figure our whether you still use it, and whether it has a replacement in Debian 11.) – Stephen Kitt Jan 15 '24 at 17:45
  • Figuring that out is definitely above my paygrade right now. Since it has nothing to be updated to and I know how to update around it, I'm going to leave it be for now. I appreciate all your help. – IamBatman Jan 23 '24 at 00:14
0

apt is sufficient and has replaced apt-get for most intents and purposes.

apt update updates the repositories and is important to run to keep them synced. What you are seeing from the output are the repos that have been synced. To see the repos that are available on the system, use the command:

apt-cache policy

To actually update the packages themselves afterwards, you need the following command:

apt upgrade
Nasir Riley
  • 11,422
  • @GAD3R It was never said that the distribution was being updated. Stephen's answer also doesn't include apt dist-upgrade and only mentions apt full-upgrade if going to a newer release. That would require an entirely different question as there is more that needs to be done. The last part of the question is How do I get it updated?. – Nasir Riley Jan 11 '24 at 12:37
  • 1
    @GAD3R And I repeat, that isn't mentioned anywhere in Stephen's answer. If you are certain of that, then comment on his answer as well where it also isn't included. – Nasir Riley Jan 11 '24 at 22:17
  • Thank you for the additional information on apt update. – IamBatman Jan 15 '24 at 15:20