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**claydoh** · Jan 03, 2018, 06:44 PM

In the end, no matter which tool you use, updating and managing packages ends up being the same process under the gui or cli skin.

A gui lets you search easier, and requires less knowledge of what to do The command line is more "powerful", takes some (small) amount of learning to use, and gives you more informative feedback if something does not work - this, imnsho is the real, main benefit of the command-line over a gui. Ultimately, each person figures out what they like best and what works best for them. I have used Linux since 2000, and Kubuntu since the beginning (2005). I mainly use the updater tool to do its job with some command line work when I know exactly what I want. Despite what many old timers may say, Discover is fine for many people, as they have little need to know about things like the package libkf5akonadiagentbase5 or some other things the user does not physically access or run.

Having said that, using apt to manage and update things is NOT difficult to do at all, just different.

so:

1) correct
2) Muon will show you everything and anything available, including system libraries and other things you don't "see" on a day to day basis, but may be installable as a dependency needed by some application.
3)updating your system does not upgrade you to the latest release - just hets you to the latest security and other updates to the release you have. As you are on 16.04, an LTS you do not automatically get a prompt to upgrade to a newer release (17.10, for example), though this is configurable from within Discover or Muon/s settings, or can be done manually, from the commandline. This process uses a separate tool and does not involve Muon, or Discover. Most LTS release users like to stay on LTS so they do not get prompted as often to upgrade

**oshunluvr** · Jan 03, 2018, 08:05 PM

First, let me welcome you to Linux in general and KFN in particular. Once you shed your Windows concepts, you'll likely find Linux to be powerful, simple, and free - in every sense of the word. Here, on this forum, you'll find dumb questions are OK and smart questions even better. Do your best to listen and learn as you go and you'll be rewarded with more and more knowledge, and before long you'll be helping the new guy.

Piling on to what Claydoh has already said:

1) The command line installation of a package (or most other actions) gives you more finite control and more feedback from your actions. It also requires more knowledge and more specificity. So if you're in need of a helping hand to install a package, a GUI installer will guide you in most cases. If you clearly know what you need to install, a quick terminal command will get it done without pomp-and-circumstance. Both methods have their benefits and pitfalls.

2) The differences, other than the occasional bug or issue, between the various GUI installation tools is mostly a visual one. Some features may be better defined in one tool or the other and one may appeal to your personal taste more than another. Muon is written in QT but Synaptic is written using GTK. Plasma (aka KDE) is QT based so Muon - as a QT application - brings less extra stuff with it when it's installed. Synaptic, on the other hand is much longer in-the-tooth than Muon and thus is very familiar to a large user base, but requires more to be installed (not much really) and has a different look. It's really personal preference. The first thing to know about Linux is it's your operating system in a very true sense. Make it your own and install what works for you.

3) This is a personal peeve of mine: why in the heck some developer thought "update" and "upgrade" and "full-upgrade" and "dist-upgrade" and "do-release-upgrade" would not be somehow confusing to most users is beyond me. This question comes up waaay too often. Both apt and apt-get are simple command-line tools for package maintenance. I'll try and clarify the terms for their usage;

Your list of installed "stuff" are commonly referred to as "packages."
When reloading (updating) the list of available packages and their versions available to your system, you're doing an "update."
If you want to install the latest version of a particular package but you don't want to include the installation or removal of any other packages, you're doing an "upgrade."
If you want to upgrade a package and any associated packages (usually recommended), including possibly installing new or removing old packages, you're doing a "dist-upgrade" or "full-upgrade" - depending on the tool being used; apt (full-upgrade) or apt-get (dist-upgrade).
If you want to move from your current operating system to the next version - like from 16.04 to 16.10 - you're doing a "do-release-upgrade" which is a totally different tool from apt or apt-get.

Hopefully, that helps a little bit. If you use a GUI tool, most of this will be handled without your input. Many of us, whether old-school or curious or just feel it's more efficient, use the command line and don't bother with the tools. To me, a GUI tool is someone else's idea of how I should be doing something. Sometimes I like their ideas, sometimes I don't. I like to learn the command line so I know my options, then pick a GUI tool that operates the way I like. In some cases, I write my own GUI tool so everything operates the way I like, and THAT is the real power of Linux.

**Robert24** · Jan 04, 2018, 09:39 AM

Thank you to both of you! You were extremely helpful.

I now get a better feeling of what these different tools look like. I also learned about LTS release with the answer of claydoh, and I think I will just wait until April 2018 before updating my Kubuntu.

Have a nice day!

**oshunluvr** · Jan 04, 2018, 10:25 AM

Originally posted by Robert24 View Post

Thank you to both of you! You were extremely helpful.

I now get a better feeling of what these different tools look like. I also learned about LTS release with the answer of claydoh, and I think I will just wait until April 2018 before updating my Kubuntu.

Have a nice day!

Glad we helped - a final bit of advice regarding upgrading to the next release. My advice is to NOT upgrade as soon as the new release is available. Remember, Linux is a community effort so not all bugs or issues are discovered before releases. My suggestion is to start reading the bug reports and various posts the week of release. If there are a large number of bug reports or some that specifically apply to you, wait it out a bit. Think of it as a "shake down" period. Once the number of reports cools off - usually only a few weeks or a month - then go for the release upgrade.

MY personal preference is to not upgrade a release ever. I prefer to do a new, fresh, full install and be able to boot both the new and older versions at will. Then I test the new install by using it from time to time, adding my personal edits, scripts, setups, etc. Once I feel it's ready for daily use, I convert over and leave the older install in place as a backup for a time.

Sticking with LTS releases has benefits and pitfalls like any other part of Linux. The advantage is a rock-solid base with little in the way of issues or needed package upgrades. The disadvantage is a slow moving path toward future new features or enhancements because not all the new things will be made available to an older release.

I'm still using 14.04 on my server, which I upgraded from 12.04 only because newer tools for the btrfs filesystem were only available if I upgraded. I will be upgrading my server to 18.04 because 14.04 will lose support soon enough and I want to install a few newer releases of software I use on my server that are not compatible with 14.04. However, I probably will wait until late summer to do the upgrade.

There's nothing wrong with not sticking with LTS releases if you want newer tech or a fresh look and new tools more often than every two years, but it can be more work to maintain. When I first started with Kubuntu in 2009 I jumped on every new release. Then when 10.10 just had too much wrong with it to work on my system (I got tired of running down bugs), I stuck with 10.04 until 11.04. Then I had a similar experience with 11.10. From then on I skipped all .10 releases just because the twice-annual upgrade became more work than I wanted, but also back then all the releases had a longer support cycle than now. Today, if you don't upgrade at each six-month release, you're potentially without updates for three months if you upgrade your release annually instead.

Now I use KDEneon which is based on the Ubuntu 16.04 LTS core, but with quickly developed KDE/Plasma repositories. It's kind of a sweet-spot between LTS and six month upgrades and looks and acts very similar to Kubuntu. I'm assuming the KDEneon team will move to 18.04 when it's released, but if not I will change back to Kubuntu then.

Always with Linux - there's more than just one option. If you're new to Linux and/or Kubuntu. I recommend sticking with LTS until you get a little experience and more comfortable with it. Then, do a dual-boot install of the latest release and see how it goes.

**jglen490** · Jan 04, 2018, 10:40 AM

I would like to "pile on" with a Welcome to Kubuntu!

The update and upgrade processes within your current release (i.e., 16.04) will and do occur constantly as patches (security and otherwise) are made available. Like you, I intend to stay with 16.04 LTS until the next LTS in April. You will likely receive notices in the GUI that upgrades are available, or have (in some cases) have actually been applied.

So I use both the GUI (Synaptic and Muon, in my case) and the command line. I use the GUI to locate/install new packages as I find a need, and I use the command line to update and upgrade based on notices received. I find Synaptic to be a bit more useful, but that's just my choice. When going to the command line within a terminal, I do the following:

Code:

 sudo apt-get update

Then I review what updates are available, and ...

Code:

sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

to actually apply the upgrades within 16.04LTS.
It's possible to put both commands on a single line, but I almost never do that. It's a choice! The same thing actually happens when you respond to an update notice within the GUI, it's just behind the curtain.

You'll find that "choice" comes up a lot - because there are many ways to do the same thing. That comes with learning - and time.

When you have questions or thoughts, bring them here! Lot's of good and smart folks ...

**GreyGeek** · Jan 04, 2018, 10:21 PM

Welcome to KFN & Kubuntu, Robert!
I've been using Linux since 1998 and Kubuntu from 2009 to 2015 and KDE Neon since 2015.

The older I get (76 presently) the more I drift toward GUI tools. Muon allows me to use the search and use just part of the name of a package in order to locate it and similar packages. I haven't found an easy way to do that in the CLI, but I haven't looked that hard, either.

But, I do 95% of my udpates using the two apt commands given in a post above. And, if I am lucky enough to know the exact name of a package I will use "sudo apt install exactname" or "sudo apt remove/purge exactname" to add or remove it.

I use Btrfs as my file system, something I'd recommend that you use as well. Oshunluver has excellent tutorials on it in this forum. I do ALL of my Btrfs maintenance on the CLI. Primarily because it is easy and I am lazy. Forgetful too.

I use Btrfs because I can take a snapshot backup of my system in 30 seconds and do a full rollback in 3 minutes, if I make a mistake or don't like the direction my experimenting is taking me.

**Robert24** · Jan 05, 2018, 04:51 AM

Thank you to the three of you! You are very helpful.

@oshunluvr I think I will follow your advice and stick to the LTS for a while. I'm happy with my current version, and I don't need to many applications. It's more important for me to have something solid than having the latest version of Kubuntu. And looking at your location, I discovered the existence of New Bern and was delighted by this discovery since I grew up in Switzerland whose capital is the ``original" Bern (even though it is a quite small city and a lot of people believe that Zurich or Geneva is the capital of Switzerland).

@jglen490 I think I will manage my updates and upgrades of packages like you. Thanks for your answer.

@GreyGeek Thanks a lot for your advice. I will look at this Btrfs.

Have a nice day

**oshunluvr** · Jan 05, 2018, 08:31 AM

Originally posted by Robert24 View Post

...And looking at your location, I discovered the existence of New Bern and was delighted by this discovery since I grew up in Switzerland whose capital is the ``original" Bern (even though it is a quite small city and a lot of people believe that Zurich or Geneva is the capital of Switzerland).

Ah, wonderful coincidence! Yes, New Bern was the Provincial capital city back when North Carolina was under British rule and was founded by Christoph von Graffenried, 1st Baron of Bernberg, in 1710. I believe he was born in Bern and thus chose his home city to name our town, appropriately as Bern is a capital and New Bern was also at the time. For the record, I was aware that Bern was the Swiss capital before I moved here but I have not visited there.

However, I have been to Zurich, Geneva, and Königssee - a beautiful country if there every was one.

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