apt and apt-get provides online package update for the deb based distributions. We can list currently available updates of the current system with these apt and apt-get commands in different ways. We can list updateable or upgradeable packages for Linux distributions like Ubuntu, Debian, Mint, Kali etc.

Update Repository/Packages Information

In order to list available package updates, we have to get the latest updates from package repositories. So first we will get latest updates one of the following commands.

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We can see in the last line of the screenshot that the total numbers of the available updates are provided which is 3 in this case.

List Available Updates with apt

Now we can list available updates with the apt command by providing list --upgradeable options.

We can see that the following information about the updateable packages is provided.

• name of the package
• repository of the package
• newer version of the package
• older or current version of the package

List Available Updates with apt-get

We can also use apt-get command with the specified options where it will provide less information according to apt command.

We can see from the screenshot that only the updateable package names are provided.

List Available Updates with aptitude

We can use  aptitude command in order to list upgradeable packages. We will use the search option where to select the upgrade flagged packages.

Install/Upgrade Available Package Updates with apt, apt-get and aptitude

We can update/upgrade available updates with apt , apt-get and aptitude commands like below.

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