[SOLVED] mintUpdate, package levels, and command line

[gumbeto]

Hi,

Is there a way of updating through the command line, but filtering the packages according to the same levels that are shown on mintUpdate?

Also, is this level information contained on the packages themselves? Or is it derived somehow?

Thanks! Cheers

[viking777]

The mint devs decide on the level, it is not written into the package details and therefore afaik this is not possible from the command line. Another difficulty is that the majority of packages on Mint come from Ubuntu/Debian and neither of those distros have any concept of 'levels'.

[gumbeto]

OK, but these levels are somehow shown in mintUpdate, so they must be derived somehow. Does anyone know what are the rules for this?

So, these levels are present in a graphical tool but not in the command line? Is it just me who feels this is a bit weird?

I am thinking that either the levels are unimportant and not doing anything there, or they are important and a command line tool supporting them is an essencial piece that is missing...

In practice, as someone new to mint, I am faced with the choice of always using mintUpdate and letting go of apt-get for updates, or deciding that I ignore the levels stuff... In principle, you may say that if a tool supports them, even if graphical, it is enough, but in practice I bet many people just decide to ignore them to be able to use apt-get. Am I wrong?

[xenopeek]

The Update Manager has a set of rules to determine what the level of a package should be, as detailed a bit here: http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.p ... 23#p610939. Those rules only apply to the Update Manager, and not to any other package manager you can use. You may currently know about Update Manager and apt-get, but you also have Synaptic and if you want there are countless other package managers you could install that will handle updating for you. All are just front-ends, so you can use whichever you are more comfortable with.

Linux Mint developed the Update Manager with these set of rules so as to keep users new to Linux, or less technically savvy, safe while installing upgrades. Some upgrades, like to the kernel or to xorg, could possibly cause your system not to boot properly after installation. A user comfortable with Linux, or more technically savvy, will probably have no problem rolling back such an upgrade. For other users it would be a very bad experience. Hence the Update Manager and its set of rules. Note that most users don't use the terminal all that much

[gumbeto]

OK, thank you for your replies. Having thought that the levels were included in the package, I though there was actually some testing going on and that "level 5" updates had actually been found to cause problems. I didn't think all kernels would always be kept back. So, I will be sticking to apt-get after all

[unkilbeeg]

OK, the takeaway from this is that doing updates from apt-get is generally not going to screw anything up? I'm mainly concerned that it not "ubuntufy" Mint too much, adding "features" (like Unity, etc) that might disrupt the Mint experience.

I've got a hundred desktops to update at a time. Sitting down at each one is not an option. I need a command line tool. apt-get is fine as long is it won't cause problems.

[gumbeto]

@unkilbeeg: if you limit yourself to apt-get upgrade, no new packages are installed and so I don't see any risk of "ubuntifying" anything (major version changes go into different packages, so you wouldn't get gnome3 for updating gnome2 ). In any case, levels are not related to that and I don't see how they could help preventing "ubuntifying" things.

I never touched mintUpdate again and have been always using apt-get without any problems. BTW, to update kernels I need to do 'apt-get dist-upgrade' ('apt-get upgrade' is not enough).