Is MintUpdate the best way to keep LMDE up-to-date? [SOLVED]

[inktitan]

I've never done it because it seems like a bad idea, but what if one was to simply use all of the "upgradeables" in the package manager? I assume it lacks all of the new additions but is it safe to use for just upgrading currently installed items? Using the previously mentioned commands the "sudo" update for me seems to break the terminal during the install. How would I exclude updating "sudo" from the process?

[secipolla]

Thanks for all the comments.

I've now installed secipolla's

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sudo apt-get install debdelta

followed by

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sudo apt-get update && sudo debdelta-upgrade

and I've also run Vincent's

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sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

and both seemed to do things without stuffing up everything else. If I understand things correctly, both commands do the same job, except that debdelta does it a bit more intelligently and will save me time & bandwidth.

But, until now, I had been running MintUpdate, which is apparently not a very good idea.

So the next two questions are:
Have I somehow broken LMDE by using MintUpdate?
Should I do a complete re-install and then update using only either of the terminal commands mentioned above?

Wrinkly, both commands don't do the same thing. debdelta-upgrade is an 'extra' command. It doesn't install packages it just grabs them (actually grabs and builds the deltas).
It can be run before apt-get (upgrade or dist-upgrade), aptitude (safe-upgrade or full-upgrade) or a graphical package manager.
Also you just need to run 'apt-get update' once (it gets the information of which packages are upgradable).

So if you would opt for apt-get to upgrade your system, you wold run

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apt-get update && debdelta-upgrade && apt-get dist-upgrade

Note to emphasize: debdelta-upgrade is useful for people that pay for the amount of bandwidth used (as Ikey's example showed) and for people that have relatively low speed connections (and as such it is definitely useful for you, Wrinkly).

[Wrinkly]

Wrinkly, both commands don't do the same thing. debdelta-upgrade is an 'extra' command. It doesn't install packages it just grabs them (actually grabs and builds the deltas).
It can be run before apt-get (upgrade or dist-upgrade), aptitude (safe-upgrade or full-upgrade) or a graphical package manager.
Also you just need to run 'apt-get update' once (it gets the information of which packages are upgradable).

So if you would opt for apt-get to upgrade your system, you wold run

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apt-get update && debdelta-upgrade && apt-get dist-upgrade

Note to emphasize: debdelta-upgrade is useful for people that pay for the amount of bandwidth used (as Ikey's example showed) and for people that have relatively low speed connections (and as such it is definitely useful for you, Wrinkly).

Thank you very much for all of that, which I think I understand. But now I've hit a problem as you'll see from the output I've pasted here:

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aspire@5315-laptop ~ $ apt-get update && debdelta-upgrade && apt-get dist-upgrade
E: Could not open lock file /var/lib/apt/lists/lock - open (13: Permission denied)
E: Unable to lock directory /var/lib/apt/lists/
E: Could not open lock file /var/lib/dpkg/lock - open (13: Permission denied)
E: Unable to lock the administration directory (/var/lib/dpkg/), are you root?
aspire@5315-laptop ~ $

What did I do wrong?

[Wrinkly]

I'd also like to take the chance to +1 the debdelta-upgrade choice, I use it too.

Thank you, ikey, for this endorsement. I must say it gives me more confidence.
Cheers

[rtrev]

Try adding sudo before each command. You need root privs to run these things. <g>

[Wrinkly]

Try adding sudo before each command. You need root privs to run these things. <g>

Oh yes. Thanks. That's much better now. Please don't let this be a symptom of dementia.

[rtrev]

Try adding sudo before each command. You need root privs to run these things. <g>

Oh yes. Thanks. That's much better now. Please don't let this be a symptom of dementia.

Oh, don't worry.. dementia only begins when you start trying to figure out GIMP. LOL! You're doing fine!

Bob

[Tony.B]

But, as I've found to my cost, not ALL updates are GOOD updates. Some of them seem to mess up everything. Is their any way of knowing in advance if we would be better leaving things un-updated?

[msuggs]

But, as I've found to my cost, not ALL updates are GOOD updates. Some of them seem to mess up everything. Is their any way of knowing in advance if we would be better leaving things un-updated?

Use apt-get upgrade or Mint update to upgrade your system (instead of apt-get dist-upgrade) and wait for Clem to sort out how LMDE will upgrade safely in the future. He has stated previously that this will be worked on after the release of Mint10.

[Tony.B]

Use apt-get upgrade or Mint update to upgrade your system (instead of apt-get dist-upgrade) and wait for Clem to sort out how LMDE will upgrade safely in the future. He has stated previously that this will be worked on after the release of Mint10.

Thank you, omns.

[Daemons]

Hello,

What is the status of MintUpdate? It still has it's strange behaviour of not checking for updates unless clicked upon.

Marc

Ex-ubuntu user, and born again LMDE user.