How to Update One or All Apps on Linux in Seconds

It’s a fact of computing: apps are going to nag you to update. These shouldn’t be ignored, though, as updates often carry security patches, bug fixes, and new features that make the software more useful.

We’ve talked about the essentials to updating Linux and Linux software, but perhaps you just want to quickly update an application on your computer and get on with life.

For those times, there’s a simple terminal command to update anything on your computer:

sudo apt-get install [package name here]

This command will simply check for  and install any updates on the software specified. If you don’t know the package name of the app you’d like to update, you can run the following command to list all the packages on your system (the “| less” lets you scroll using the arrow keys):

apt-cache pkgnames | less

There are a few more commands you can use to beef up this process if you’d like to update everything at once. Running the following command will grab the latest information about the software on your computer:

sudo apt-get update

Once you run this, run this command to update all software that has a newer version. The system will list everything that will be updated by this command and ask you to confirm by typing Y.

sudo apt-get upgrade

That’s it! Now you have all you need to quickly update apps in Linux  right from the terminal.

Don’t have much software to update yet? Check out our list of the best Linux software.

Do you prefer to update Linux apps through the terminal or GUI? Tell us what you think in the comments!

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