One of our readers submitted a question to us asking “what the most efficient way to manually update your Ubuntu machine?” It’s a great question and this brief blog post is going to show those who don’t already know the most efficient way to manually update Ubuntu.

If you’re new to Ubuntu and looking for an efficient way to manually update your machine, then continue below to learn how. I know this isn’t new and many Ubuntu users already know something about updating Ubuntu, however, some new users may find this useful.

You see, whenever Ubuntu run the update command, it downloads all pending software updates and security patches for software already installed on your machine. The newer software will replace the older ones and something their configuration files.

Something that few people know is that Software Updater command in Ubuntu only wants to update and upgrade packages by downloading their latest versions and dependencies to complete the installation. The updater doesn’t want to remove old and unused packages or dependencies automatically from your systems. If you want to remove them, you must specify it by including the autoremove switch or option to the command.

The autoremove option is used to remove packages that were automatically installed to satisfy dependencies for some programs that are no longer needed. It’s always good to remove unneeded packages from your system. It is also used to remove older system’s kernels that are no longer needed.

So, the most efficient way to manually update packages in Ubuntu is to update those software packages that need them as well as remove all unwanted dependencies from your system. To do that, you run the commands below.

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade && sudo apt-get autoremove

 

That’s it! Run the commands above from the command console or terminal to efficiently update your machine.

Enjoy!