3.8 Installing Updates

As with most operating systems today, each particular release of the Ubuntu distribution continues to evolve after it has been released. This generally takes the form of bug fixes and security updates and, occasionally, new features that may be downloaded over the internet and installed on your system.

Best practices dictate that the first step after installing Ubuntu is to make sure any available updates are applied to the system. This can be achieved via the command-line prompt in a Terminal window using the apt package manager tool. To check for the availability of updates, right-click on the desktop background and, from the resulting menu, select the Open in Terminal option:

Figure 3-19

Within the Terminal window, run the following commands to gain root privileges and update the package list:

$ sudo su -

# apt update

If updated packages are available, the command will display output similar to the following:

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Reading package lists... Done

Building dependency tree

Reading state information... Done

103 packages can be upgraded. Run ‘apt list --upgradable’ to see them.

Any pending updates may be applied using the apt tool:

# apt upgrade

Upon execution, the apt tool will provide a list of packages that are available for update and prompt for permission to perform the update

103 upgraded, 7 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.

Need to get 75.2 MB/286 MB of archives.

After this operation, 352 MB of additional disk space will be used.

Do you want to continue? [Y/n]

Once the upgrade is complete the installation is essentially finished.