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Will apt-get dist-upgrade do the exact same thing as running do-release-upgrade?

I'm currently running Ubuntu Server 11.04.

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1 Answer

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apt-get dist-upgrade will not carry out a release update, unless you modify /etc/apt/sources.list.

This command updates all installed packages and their dependency changes. If you combine running this command with appropriate changes to the /etc/apt/sources.list file, you can upgrade your version of Ubuntu.

do-release-upgrade will carry out a release update.

So for example, if you want to move from Ubuntu 11.04 to 11.10, you have 2 options:

  1. Change each occurence of the word "natty" in the /etc/apt/sources.list file to "oneiric" and run the command apt-get dist-upgrade
  2. Run the do-release-upgrade command.
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Thanks Kenny! Appreciate your thorough response. – Kirk Oct 19 '11 at 18:44
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do-release-upgrade has some other cool features, like "--sandbox", which remounts your filesystems with aufs so that the upgrade can be rolled back! – Coops Oct 19 '11 at 20:36

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