update Archives • Linux Tips

Update Flatpaks From The Terminal

Today’s article is just going to be nice and quick. It is just going to be about how you can update flatpaks from the terminal. This might be something you’re interested in learning. So, if you want to know how to update flatpaks from the terminal, this is the article for you!

Trust me, this shouldn’t take too long. That’s good because I’m not sure how long I have! I’m having some desktop computer issues. I have laptops, yes plural, available, but I hate typing on them. I could just hook up an external monitor and keyboard, but that’s a lot like work. If I was interested in doing work, I’d investigate why my desktop PCs keep dying.

What Is A Flatpak:

A flatpak is an application package format. To enable flatpaks, you’ll have to install some software first. That seems like a good article that hasn’t been written yet.

Anyhow, a flatpak comes with all the dependencies it needs to run. It is also run in a sandbox, meaning it is more secure as it runs independently of the operating system and other applications. As they run independently, they’re able to be installed (in theory) on any distro. You don’t need to make a flatpak for each distro’s package manager, you can just make the one flatpak and it should work everywhere.

If you have something like the Gnome Software Manager and you’ve installed the initial flatpak software (software that enables you to use these packages in the first place) then you’ll see that it integrates flatpaks into the system. In that case, flatpaks will update with the rest of the system and you don’t need to worry about updating flatpaks in the terminal.

On the other hand, this may not be true for you and you may not realize that you can update flatpaks from the terminal. Which means this is for you…

Update Flatpaks From The Terminal:

Of course, this means you need an open terminal. Just press CTRL + ALT + T and your default terminal should open. You may need to open the terminal from your application menu, but the above key bindings are fairly universal.

The command is really simple if you want to update flatpaks from the terminal. To do so, you simply run this command:

flatpak update

1	flatpak update

Notice that you do not need sudo or any elevated permissions. Many folks list this command as a sudo prefaced command and that’s not necessary. The flatpaks installed are installed in a way that the files belong to the user. As such, there’s no need to use elevated permissions.

While you’re there, there’s a lot that one might not know about the flatpak application. I highly suggest you check out the man page to learn more – as there’s quite a bit that you can do with the application.

man flatpak

1	man flatpak

Yeah, that should show you all the options you have. There are far too many options to cover in this short article about updating flatpaks from the terminal.

Closure:

So, yeah… I told you that this would be a nice and short article. There’s a way to update flatpaks from the terminal and this is how you do it. You might as well know how to do so. It’s not complicated and might come in handy someday, especially if you’re expected to update them manually.

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How To: Update A Single Package In Ubuntu

Today’s article should be short because it’s late in the evening and I have decided to write about how to update a single package in Ubuntu. It’s an easy topic to write about, as there are really just a couple of choices. It shouldn’t be complicated and, for the most part.

First, let me state this…

I firmly believe that you should keep everything updated and updated the minute the update is available.

HOWEVER…

That assumes a perfect world. We do not live in a perfect world. We live in the real world. Because of this, people delay updates for various reasons. The biggest delay I can think of at this hour of the night is the delays added in the business world.

Rather than push an update to production, they’ll run it through testing first. It can take quite a while before an update makes it into production.

The reality is that many of our updates are security updates. As a byproduct of their update policy, at any given time they’re running insecure software. I understand why they’d do this. They don’t want things to break. They certainly don’t want public-facing things to break.

Again, I can understand why regular people follow a similar process. They’ll wait and watch to see if the updates cause problems for other people. But, that’s like waiting for the first person to jump in the river to see if the water is cold.

In all my years of using Linux, I’ve had updates bork the system fewer times than I have fingers on one hand. I’ve had updates bork the system so completely that it hoses everything exactly zero times. As in, not once was I screwed over by an update that really did any damage.

But…

Again, I can understand those who would rather be cautious.

This article is for you. It’s for you people who want to update a single package in Ubuntu. It’s for those people who do what they must in order to maintain a stable system.

This isn’t just applicable to Ubuntu. I tend to use Lubuntu and, as such, am a fan. So, I used Ubuntu in the headline. This applies equally to Debian, Mint, and other Ubuntu derivatives. It should even work in derivatives of derivatives. It’s pretty basic stuff.

Update A Single Package In Ubuntu:

So, you might be able to do this with a GUI. I don’t actually know and I didn’t test to see if there was a way to do so graphically. Check your software manager while the rest of us open a terminal. You can (more often than not) open your default terminal by pressing CTRL + ALT + T.

With your terminal now open, you need an application to update. If you’re a good netizen, you hopefully don’t have many upgrades available. You can check and see by running this command:

sudo apt update

1	sudo apt update

You can then get a list of applications that can be updated, assuming there’s an application that can be updated, with the following command:

sudo apt list --upgradeable

1	sudo apt list --upgradeable

The next step is to use one of the following two commands to update a single package in Ubuntu (neither of which are all that difficult):

sudo apt install <package_name>

1	sudo apt install <package_name>

Yes, that looks like it’s going to install a new application, but you substitute the <package_name> with the package name that you want to update in Ubuntu. The ‘install’ will happily upgrade to the next passage.

The next one is bit more jargony. Jargon-y? Maybe? It’s more complicated looking (but easy enough to memorize). So, if you want to update a single package in Ubuntu, this too should also do the trick:

sudo apt-get --only-upgrade install <package_name>

1	sudo apt-get --only-upgrade install <package_name>

Once again, you replace the obvious with the obvious. Just doing so would help you sort out how to update a single package in Ubuntu. Either of these commands should work, so you do have a choice.

Closure:

As I said, it’s not going to be all that difficult to update a single package in Ubuntu. You have a choice in commands. While I think it’s best to avoid all update delays, I do understand why you might want to be more cautious.

I go full blast at updates, but I’ve lately been a bit slow about major upgrades. In my case it’s a bandwidth issue. I had one box running like Linux Mint 20 or something like that…

Wait, it still says 21 is the version – but I’m quite literally nearing the end of the upgrade process. That may have already changed. I was so far behind that I needed more than 4 GB worth of downloads. When I’m done we’ll have an OS that’s missing almost all the stuff I installed on top of it!

It can sure be a pain in the butt. Alas, as least I’m not trying to update a single package in Ubuntu!

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Let’s Update Ubuntu In The Terminal

Today’s article will be a nice basic article, where we discuss how to update Ubuntu in the terminal. It seems like a fine article to write and one that not everyone will be versed in. There are lots of folks who don’t use the terminal for much of anything. Then, there are people like me who use the terminal for all sorts of stuff.

If you know how to update Ubuntu in the terminal, this really won’t be a very interesting article. We’ll just be covering the basics and I’ll explain how I do it. You’ll see that I tend to throw caution to the wind and just blindly hope for the best. This strategy is fine for me, ’cause I can fix pretty much anything. (I can fix pretty much anything because I’ve broken pretty much everything.)

Of course, this article applies to Debian. This article applies to Linux Mint. This article should apply to anything that uses apt as the package manager. So, if your distro is related to Debian then this will probably work just fine for you.

Well, there’s no reason to make the intro any longer… I think I’ve covered all that you need to know to get started.

Update Ubuntu In The Terminal:

As you can guess, we need an open terminal if we’re going to update Ubuntu in the terminal. That only stands to reason… Press CTRL + ALT + T and your default terminal should open.

With your terminal now open, let’s update the list of software that’s available. Let’s see what software can be updated. To do that, you just run:

sudo apt update

1	sudo apt update

That will tell you the software that’s available to update. You can see what those updates are with the following command:

sudo apt list --upgradable

1	sudo apt list --upgradable

You can then upgrade those applications one by one if you want to. Some cautious people do this. Some businesses do this – and do this to a staging environment to test – ’cause they need to keep things running. If you want to upgrade just a single package, try this:

sudo apt --only-upgrade install <package_name>

1	sudo apt --only-upgrade install <package_name>

Now, most folks are probably going to want to upgrade all the software that has new versions. They get it easy, they just type:

sudo apt upgrade

1	sudo apt upgrade

This will give you the chance to see everything that’s going to be upgraded and the chance to decline or agree. Me? I automatically agree. You might want to be more cautious, but I like running the command closer to this:

sudo apt upgrade -y

1	sudo apt upgrade -y

That automatically says yes that I’d like to upgrade all the things. After all, even if stuff were to break, I’d have had to have upgraded to find it anyhow.

I go a step further and just tie the two commands together. The command I run would look closer to this:

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y

1	sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y

That will find all the available upgrades and install them automatically, that is without any further input from me. I’ve done this for years and it hasn’t been a problem or any more of a problem any other method would cause me. So, in short, that works for me.

Closure:

I don’t know that you wanted to learn how to update Ubuntu in the terminal, but that’s today’s lesson. It’s not very complicated. I could keep going, as my actually command also includes the ‘clean’ option. I use an alias to tie it all together, rather than typing it out each time. There are also similar commands you can use for other distros with different package managers.

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How To: Update OpenSUSE Tumbleweed From The Terminal

It’s time for an article that describes how to update openSUSE from the terminal. After all, I’ve done so for Ubuntu and Fedora. I might as well do one for openSUSE. It seems like a good thing to do.

While most of this site is aimed at bringing you up to speed, making Linux easier, it’s also biased towards desktop Linux users. Well, today’s distro isn’t really all that popular in the desktop sphere, it’s more a server distro. There is a desktop version, and it’s a pretty great distroy.

So, to avoid confusion, “SLES” stands for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server. It is a paid product with an excellent pedigree and a great reputation in the community. openSUSE is the community edition of that software. openSUSE is mostly used on the desktop, as a workstation distro.

Over the years, I’ve tried openSUSE here and there and found it to be functional, stable, and easy enough to figure out. There’s a lovely rolling-release version of openSUSE that’s called ‘Tumbleweed’. If you have a hankering to try openSUSE, go for it and give Tumbleweed a shot!

A shout-out to a Linux.org user: Gecko Linux is based on openSUSE.

Oddly, it’s often harder to write the intro than it is to write the meat of the article. It can even take more time to write the intro than it takes to write the rest of the article. This article is likely to be one of those.

Ah well… On to the article!

Update openSUSE From The Terminal:

You’ll need an open terminal. If you don’t know how to open the terminal, you can do so with your keyboard – just press CTRL + ALT + T and your default terminal should open.

First, you need to refresh the database of what software you have vs what software is available. Obviously this means comparing version numbers. This is a necessary step, otherwise it’d be updating blindly and that’d make no sense! So, the command you’re looking for is:

sudo zypper refresh

1	sudo zypper refresh

That will run its course and take some time. On a rolling release, you can expect quite a lot of updates to be available. When it is finished, and you’re ready to do the updates, you can just enter:

sudo zypper update

1	sudo zypper update

That’s actually all there is to it, at the base level. There’s still more, as there always is. There’s always more! If you have run the refresh command and want to see what upgrades are available, you can do that with this command:

sudo zypper list-updates

1	sudo zypper list-updates

But, that’s about all you’re going to need to know. Like always, check the man page. It’s not terribly difficult to update openSUSE, anyhow. It’s straight forward in both the terminal and GUI. My personal preference is to use the terminal.

Closure:

Woohoo! There you have it! Here’s another article and this one is showing you how to update openSUSE in the terminal. It’s not terribly difficult, but it’s worth knowing. Not too many people use openSUSE and even the best of us might be unfamiliar and need a hint.

Thanks for reading! If you want to help, or if the site has helped you, you can donate, register to help, write an article, or buy inexpensive hosting to start your own site. If you scroll down, you can sign up for the newsletter, vote for the article, and comment.

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Upgrade Ubuntu From The Terminal

Today’s article will show how to update and upgrade Ubuntu from the terminal. Of course, this will work on any system that uses apt, including Debian, Lubuntu, Linux Mint, etc… You can always upgrade when the GUI tells you to, but you can do it manually on your own time.

Once in a while, I come across someone who refuses to upgrade. This is a bad idea. Upgrades include things like security upgrades and they’re pretty much mandatory. It’s Linux, so you don’t “have to”, but it makes you a bad netizen because those security upgrades may very well mean your computer is being used as a spam relay or, worse, a part of a botnet.

So, please, upgrade your Ubuntu systems – and, really, all Linux boxes should get regular upgrades. I can’t emphasize this enough! Upgrade your system – if not for you then for the rest of us who have to deal with enough internet hostility. Malware exists for Linux, as does exploits for Linux and the software you have installed. Even if you don’t care about your own experiences, care about the rest of the people on the ‘net. Thanks!

For this article, we’ll be using apt. Apt is apt-get in disguise, but not quite the same. If you’re scripting you use apt-get, because it’s more stable. When you’re running commands yourself, use apt because it’s faster/easier.

This article should be pretty quick and easy.

Upgrade Ubuntu From The Terminal:

Obviously, this article requires an open terminal. You can open one with your keyboard – just press CTRL + ALT + T and your default terminal should open.

Once you have your terminal open, we’ll go ahead and update the database (the cache) to see if any upgrades are available. To do that, you run:

sudo apt update

1	sudo apt update

It’ll tell you if upgrades are available and give you some more information – such as telling you how to see which application upgrades are available. In this case, we’re just going to upgrade everything. Like so:

sudo apt upgrade

1	sudo apt upgrade

That is sometimes interactive. It will want you to agree manually to the upgrades. You can just skip all that by adding a -y flag. Even better, you can now string both commands together and save some time monitoring the terminal. That command, and I use this pretty much exclusively by way of alias, is:

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y

1	sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y

The && means that the next command will only run if the first has been completed successfully. You can even add autoremove to this string of commands and keep things a little cleaner automatically.

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y && sudo apt autoremove -y

1	sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y && sudo apt autoremove -y

The autoremove will “remove packages that were automatically
installed to satisfy dependencies for other packages and are now no
longer needed as dependencies changed or the package(s) needing
them were removed in the meantime.” You might as well include it, as it’s pretty harmless and will save you some disk space.

Finally, there’s full-upgrade which is quite similar to the old apt-get dist-upgrade, in that it will upgrade you to a new release if both a new release is available and your settings are to upgrade to new releases (instead of staying on a LTS branch, for example). You’ll find that full-upgrade is also capable of deleting unneeded files all on its own.

To use full-upgrade, you’d still run the update first and then run the command. You can also pack them together, like so:

sudo apt update && sudo apt full-upgrade -y

1	sudo apt update && sudo apt full-upgrade -y

And there you have it. That’s about all you really need to know about upgrading Ubuntu from the terminal. It’s not hard, so just do it. Yeah, once in a blue moon it breaks something. That’s usually easily fixed and the risk is worth the benefits – to you and the rest of the internet.

Closure:

I can’t emphasize it enough – do your upgrades regularly. Now you know how to upgrade Ubuntu from the terminal, which is something I naturally do out of habit. I actually have it aliased to the ‘update’ command and it takes care of all that for me. I can’t remember the last time it broke anything – but it has to have been multiple years ago. Breakage isn’t a real risk, as things are usually heavily tested.

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