How to process packages upgrade?

[gnwd]

1. use mintupdate to upgrade only those packages under level 1,2,3
OR
2. use apt-get dist-upgrade

I get confused which method is the right way in linux mint debian.


Besides this, I have run to a problem when I tried to upgrade pidgin from 2.7.x to 2.9.x. It says,
E: Could not perform immediate configuration on 'perl'. Please see man 5 apt.conf under APT::Immediate-Configure for details. (2)
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Code: Select all

$ sudo apt-get install pidgin
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
  gconf-defaults-service gconf2 gconf2-common libalgorithm-diff-xs-perl
  libapt-pkg-perl libcairo-perl libgconf2-4 libglib-perl libgnome2-canvas-perl
  libgnome2-perl libgnome2-vfs-perl libgtk2-perl libhtml-parser-perl
  liblist-moreutils-perl liblocale-gettext-perl libnet-dbus-perl libpango-perl
  libperl5.12 libpurple-bin libpurple0 libsnmp-base libsnmp15
  libtext-charwidth-perl libtext-iconv-perl libuuid-perl libxml-parser-perl
  perl perl-base perl-modules
Suggested packages:
  libfont-freetype-perl libgtk2-perl-doc libdata-dump-perl tcl8.5 tk8.5
  snmp-mibs-downloader libterm-readline-gnu-perl libterm-readline-perl-perl
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  libperl5.10
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  libperl5.12 libpurple-bin libpurple0 pidgin
The following packages will be upgraded:
  gconf-defaults-service gconf2 gconf2-common libalgorithm-diff-xs-perl
  libapt-pkg-perl libcairo-perl libgconf2-4 libglib-perl libgnome2-canvas-perl
  libgnome2-perl libgnome2-vfs-perl libgtk2-perl libhtml-parser-perl
  liblist-moreutils-perl liblocale-gettext-perl libnet-dbus-perl libpango-perl
  libsnmp-base libsnmp15 libtext-charwidth-perl libtext-iconv-perl
  libuuid-perl libxml-parser-perl perl perl-base perl-modules
26 upgraded, 4 newly installed, 1 to remove and 872 not upgraded.
Need to get 0 B/22.7 MB of archives.
After this operation, 21.1 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? y
N: Ignoring file 'opera.list.save' in directory '/etc/apt/sources.list.d/' as it has an invalid filename extension
E: Could not perform immediate configuration on 'perl'. Please see man 5 apt.conf under APT::Immediate-Configure for details. (2)

[wayne128]

For Debian based distros and straigth Debian, I followed many recommendation of using

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

Some people use aptitude.

Unique to LMDE, there is a new mint update (MU) method, this is covered by zerozero thread.
http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=141&t=76556

[Emerson Prado]

If you don't want to go as far as dist-upgrading, there's a good solution provided in the tech talk below:
http://techpatterns.com/forums/about1394.html
In short, just do:
apt-get install perl -o APT::Immediate-Configure=0
In my case, apt complained that perl would break gcc. So I just included gcc in the game:
apt-get install gcc perl -o APT::Immediate-Configure=0
Now things r fine!
Best regards,
Emerson

[theremper]

If I were you I would go this route.

[Gerd50]

Hi theremper,

point 5 to copy is wrong and nobody should copy that list!

Please read

http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=197&t=79533

and edit the list you have posted