A Question About Aptitude
I have been periodically using 'aptitude update' and 'aptitude
upgrade' from the command line to perform basic upgrades. This seemed
to be the most common approach suggested online and appeared to be a
fairly safe starting point as I try to learn more. Now I would like
to get some idea of how the aptitude UI works and how it may be
different from the command line, and so decided I would take a look at
that and as a starting point I would try to get a sense of how these
same commands might be carried out there.
In doing this, and reading various documentation, I found references
to 'U' marking packages upgradeable. I also saw the listing for
"Upgradable Packages" and so I started nosing around in there,
thinking that perhaps I would use 'U' to select this entire list. To
get some points of comparison I had tested out 'aptitude upgrade' and
'aptitude dist-upgrade' just to see what would be changed, and only
gdm-themes appeared there with one removal. In the 'Upgradable
Packages' section of aptitude there are many packages listed,
including emacs, gdm, cron, exim4, many libraries and so on. Now I am
confused. Why are there so many packages being listed as "upgradable"
and yet don't get upgraded when running 'aptitude upgrade'? What
exactly is the difference between these two lists of packages
available
upgrading?
Many thanks in advance,
Patrick
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