Let's update...

And yet I’ve never had an apt upgrade break my whole system.

Yeah, maybe I'm just not smart enough but I always have the best luck with Debian/Ubuntu style distros. I'm glad Arch users are happy with Arch, it just doesn't work for me
sudo dpkg --configure -a
my beloved
Define 'Break'... /j
- Unable to boot after the update. That’s happened to me multiple times with pacman, so I eventually switched to Fedora.
You must be very lucky then. I've seen it happen so many times.
Agreed. I ran a system upgrade at home and then went to a coffee shop. My machine didn't boot at the coffee shop. I installed Fedora instead of doing what I had gone there to do

This meme brought to you by outdated packages in the official repo

Mfw I get to go through the same yt-dlp steps after a fresh install

Why -Syyu and not -Syu?

You ... you understand pacman cli switches?
- No, I just hold my y key until there are many many ys.
- Yes. -Syyu is for "Sync (repository action), database update (forced), upgrade packages", in that order (though the flags don't have to be). Doubling a lowercase character like yy or uu is to force the operation. yy in particular shouldn't be needed, as it only overrides the "is your database recent" check. Unless you're updating more than every 5 minutes, using a single y is perfectly fine.

That's happened like once in the last 3 years and the notice was right in pacman before you accepted.
I use informant which in theory fixed this but even then there is an issue on it about some things happening earlier in pacman than the transaction hook it uses so... Bleh. This shit needs to be built into pacman itself, seriously.
Every time there's been need for manual intervention the update just fails, I check the news to do the thing, then update as usual
Been using Arch since 2019, that has never happened to me. Apparently it's all about the device behind the keyboard, not about pacman. 🤣

Never had an update break on headless Debian. Even when switching from 12 to 13. That shit is solid.
I'm getting used to arch on my main desktop and I still can't figure out why the hell "sync" is the wording pacman uses for updating or why 'y' is refresh. Sync refresh upgrade my ass. I will admin, it is fast.

I did it on the GUI all day yesterday! The only problem Debian has is being unbreakable!
Heck, I switched repos from bookworm to trixie and installed 3 GiB worth of packages - 2.5k packages - and booted into a PERFECTLY WORKING system!
Installed the other 8 GiB afterwards and booted into a perfectly working system. Just before I thought Steam was broken, I rebooted and it came alive too.
And my GTX 1650 worked right away! Do you know how many times the daily 1 GiB update on Ubuntu breaks that?!
Flatpak updates are kinda' slow, no 4 GiB downloads needed per day, Debian updates arrive at like 200 MiB a month except for apps like VSCode, Signal, or Discord. And - to be honest - that's the Windows-unlike experience every distro is missing.
Debian really is unbreakable.
Because you’re “sync”ing with the state of the repo. You’re not necessarily upgrading. Sometimes the repos have a lower version than what you have, so you would be downgrading in that case. Or sometimes you’re just using it to install a new package and its dependencies.
-u is upgrade. And -uu is upgrade or downgrade. It’s used to filter the packages that sync operates on, so basically you’re syncing any packages that have a different version than the repo.
-y for refresh? No idea. -r is root, so I guess it was already in use by the time someone added refresh?

Fedora: sudo dnf update, type the letter y, done.

I don't understand why apt still has update and upgrade as two separate things.

You can even add the -y flag to skip typing y. Which apparently doesn't work for pacman judging by the command above
- Since lowercase y as an option to uppercase S already exists to update the database, --noconfirm exists to continue without user confirmation.
I’m more of a fan of just adding the -y parameter to skip the question and go straight to updating. Works with the install command too.

Yay

Flatpack update

Flatpak, not pack *
- Lol the terminal doesn't autocorrect like my phone

sudo nix-rebuild switch

uhm, akshually it's sudo nixos-rebuild switch --upgrade
nix flake update nix flake check --no-build git commit -a nh os switch
Is the routine I've settled into. Flake update because I use flakes, flake check because it's easier to see any warnings about deprecated options and the like so I can fix them preemptively, git commit after the check to avoid back-to back commits where the second is fixing some issue with the first, and nh because I like the pretty dependency graph and progress bar.
- Lots of useful stuff here. Taking all of it.
  Does nh use fast-nix-build (or whatever the fancy nix builder CLI is called) to build your system?
This is the way.
Actually nixos-rebuild switch --sudo.

Zypper gang, dup!!
\ [an hour later]
\ Done!

(But actually I like it.)

And that’s why I don’t use PPAs, but you do you, I guess…

Yep. I'm on Debian for many years now. Every broken update I can recall was either caused by an undocumented PPA or nvidia drivers (which have finally been fixed, for my card at least)

--noconfirm

Using Debian as my main laptop distro, I am usually an arch user but figured with it being a light weight laptop I wouldn't need arch, its been fine but installing updates can be frustrating, after a few weeks gnomes appstore breaks, then I need to use terminal to apt update, apt --fix-broken install.

Don't use gnome appstore. It's always broken
- Don't use gnome.
Which Debian distribution are you using, stable, testing, unstable?
I take care of a couple machines for family members. Those have Debian stable with automatic update (unattended-upgrade). I can't recall the system or packages ever breaking. At most users are a bit confused when an update change the UI a bit.
Sticking to stable and avoiding third party repos gives a pretty solid system. Only developers or sysadmins might consider Debian testing. Only people working on Debian itself should use unstable.

Or the superior and succinct paru

guix upgrade

Or sudo dnf -y upgrade

sudo emerge -avuDN world

sudo emerge -avuDUg world
--changed-use, -U:
Tells emerge to include installed packages where USE flags have changed since installation. This option also implies the --selective option. Unlike --newuse, the --changed-use option does not trigger reinstallation when flags that the user has not enabled are added or removed.
--getbinpkg [ y | n ], -g:
Using the server and location defined in PORTAGEBINHOST (see make.conf(5)), portage will download the information from each binary package found and it will use that information to help build the dependency list. This option implies -k. (Use -gK for binary-only merging.)
- Yeah, I used to use -U but I prefer -N personally. I like the system to be consistent with what it would be from a fresh build.

$ doas apk -U upgrade

topgrade --no-retry --cleanup --yes

sudo nala upgrade

    
pkcon update

Did you decide to use that instead of the normal distro package manager or is there a distro which actually only has pkcon for the CLI?
- Nah, I just wanted to toss it in. I kinda want to get used to it, but I always fall back to the native managers.
  But I was pleasantly surprised by pkcon (through Discover) being able to do proper system updates on OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. It used to be discouraged to use it for system updates.

God this is the one thing I just hate about Ubuntu. I just avoid ppas now

Of course it won't do anything, you need to update (refresh the index) before you upgrade (download and install updates), silly you

guix pull . . . . guix upgrade

rpm-ostree upgrade && reboot

Sudo dnf update

That's ok you can finish it later

why does Ubuntu even use ppas

Using bluefin or bazzite it is automatic in the background and I don't need to click anywhere or enter any command, I don't even need to open the terminal.