Packages kept back and apt vs pkcon

[joneall]

I ran the usual commands for upgrading neon and got an odd message.

$ sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
Starting pkgProblemResolver with broken count: 0
Starting 2 pkgProblemResolver with broken count: 0
Done
Calculating upgrade... Done
The following packages have been kept back:
grub-efi-amd64-bin grub-efi-amd64-signed
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 2 not upgraded.
jon@jon-desktop:~$ sudo apt-get --with-new-pkgs upgrade
On KDE neon you should use `pkcon update` to install updates.
If you absolutely must use apt you do have to use dist-upgrade or full-upgrade in place of the upgrade command.
https://neon.kde.org/faq#command-to-update
Abort.
$ sudo pkcon update
Getting updates [=========================]
Finished [=========================]
Loading cache [=========================]
Testing changes [=========================]
Finished [ ] (0%)
The following packages have to be updated:
grub-efi-amd64-bin-2.06-2ubuntu10.amd64 GRand Unified Bootloader, version 2 (EFI-AMD64 modules)
grub-efi-amd64-signed-1.182~22.04.1+2.06-2ubuntu10.amd64 GRand Unified Bootloader, version 2 (EFI-AMD64 version, signed)
Proceed with changes? [N/y] y

[=========================]
Updating packages [=========================]
Loading cache [=========================]
Downloading packages [=========================]
Running [=========================]
Installing packages [=========================]
Finished [=========================]

But then pkcon update worked and installed the packages. So apt-get dist-upgrade kept back packages that pkcon installed. Are they pushing us to use pkcon?

[Snowhog]

See https://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=309&t=174074 and claydoh's reply.

[claydoh]

And to add to this, Ubuntu is now using a new feature Debian added to apt called Phased Updates.
Certain packages are released to a smaller subset of random people initially, before going out to the wider user base.
This is why you see the held packages. This usually lasts a few days or so. less than a week as far as I have seen.
Interestingly, it seems that using Discover (and therefore Pkcon) somehow bypasses this, even though it really is using apt etc in the background.
I am going to guess it simply isn't following the apt preset configs, is all.

$ sudo apt-get --with-new-pkgs upgrade

What happened here, is you ran apt upgrade, which, particularly in neon and any Debian-like system that sees a high number of version upgrades that can involve package removals (Debian Unstable is another example) full-upgrade is required, as normal upgrade does not allow this action, and will at some point cause serious dependency breakages.

Normal, vanilla *buntu with no PPAs etc, are usually fine to use plain 'upgrade' but full-upgrade is always safest unless you are on Debian proper.


They really are trying to keeps us sheep all confyoozed and on our toes. They are pretty good at it too.