What should be 3 Relatively easy straightforward questions...

[Kodocha]

1. If I do an apt-get update and apt-get upgrade does it upgrade ALL my packages (assuming updates are available) or just the Kernel/main distro???

2. Why does apt-cache search and aptitude search give me 2 different lists of packages. Do they have different source.list files???

3. If a package says "...great non-linear editor for KDE"... What's the odds if any it will run on my machine if I'm running Gnome???

for clarity... if it says for KDE does that mean it was specifically written for KDE ONLY and I can't run it or it won't work right because I'm NOT using KDE???

cheers

KODO

[cynwulf]

1. If I do an apt-get update and apt-get upgrade does it upgrade ALL my packages (assuming updates are available) or just the Kernel/main distro???

update only updates the package listings (a necessary step before running upgrade), upgrade actually updates/upgrades your system. It upgrades all packages.

2. Why does apt-cache search and aptitude search give me 2 different lists of packages. Do they have different source.list files???

No, but they may search differently on different criteria by default.

3. If a package says "...great non-linear editor for KDE"... What's the odds if any it will run on my machine if I'm running Gnome???

for clarity... if it says for KDE does that mean it was specifically written for KDE ONLY and I can't run it or it won't work right because I'm NOT using KDE???

cheers

KODO

It will run on gnome, but will need to (automatically) pull in the necessary dependencies (qt libs and other KDE related packages, etc).

[elija]

apt-get upgrade will upgrade all packages currently installed. There is also apt-get dist-upgrade that will update all packages already installed and install any required new packages.

I don't fully understand how it works yet but I only seem to get kernel upgrades when doing a dist-upgrade.

[cynwulf]

dist-upgrade installs/removes packages, upgrade only upgrades existing packages without removing anything.

To elaborate - dist-upgrade is aggressive. If it has to remove half of your system just to update a few libs it will do it. upgrade won't.

The aptitude equivalents are full-upgrade and safe-upgrade (the deprecated option "upgrade" works for safe-upgrade as well - or it still did the last time I checked).

If you're running the stable branch of debian then upgrade is all you need. For unstable you should always dist-upgrade.

[elija]

So if you are based on stable then dist-upgrade will do nothing or may do very bad things?