Krdytkyu

If I'm not wrong there's a new command unifying apt update && apt upgrade in 18.04 or some later beta, with some argument -u or -d.

Am I correct, or there is something similar?

This is a pending feature request (LP#1709603), and as far as I can tell there has been no development activity on it (neither on Ubuntu nor on Debian).

There is an implemented feature that automatically runs an update when adding a PPA using add-apt-repository, though (and associated options, which have changed as this behaviour is now the default).

Set in terminal with command alias your new defined command for this like for example :

alias update='sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade'

Then you have your new command "update" and you can lean back, when typed "update" in terminal.

I doubt that that change will be included, unfortunately, but you can do something similar to the other answers-so-far, with some extra niceties.

A script at /usr/local/bin/update

This has the following nice benefits that the other answers-so-far don't have:

• This completely avoids the problem that if sudo apt-get update takes a while, sudo apt-get upgrade might ask you for your password again, so you come back from your lunch break expecting upgraded packages and now you have to wait for a while for them to download and install.


• This lets you know if a restart is required (like if you get a new kernel).


• This works for all sudo users, not just you.


• This does many more package-upgrading-related tasks than just sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade, like upgrading the BIOS on some systems and upgrading snaps.

I posted this elsewhere a while back, so I'll include it here.

1. 
   

   Open a terminal (press Ctrl+Alt+T) and run:

   
   
   

   sudo touch /usr/local/bin/update
   
   sudo chmod 0755 /usr/local/bin/update
   
   sudo nano /usr/local/bin/update
   
   

   
   


2. 
   

   Paste the following into the terminal:

   
   
   

   #!/bin/bash
   
   
   
   if [ "$( /usr/bin/id -u )" -ne "0" ] ; then
   
    echo 'Please run using sudo.'
   
    exit 1
   
   fi
   
   set +e
   
   /bin/rm -f /var/cache/app-info/xmls/fwupd.xml
   
   /usr/bin/snap refresh
   
   /usr/bin/apt update
   
   /usr/bin/appstreamcli refresh --force
   
   /usr/bin/apt-file update
   
   /usr/bin/apt full-upgrade -y
   
   /usr/bin/apt autoremove --purge -y
   
   /usr/bin/apt clean
   
   /usr/bin/fwupdmgr refresh
   
   /usr/bin/fwupdmgr update
   
   /usr/bin/updatedb
   
   /sbin/fstrim --all
   
   /usr/lib/update-notifier/update-motd-reboot-required
   
   

   
   



3. Read the section below about things that you might want to change. Make any changes you feel like.



4. Press Ctrl+O to save the file. That's the letter O, not zero.


5. Press Enter to accept the filename.


6. Press Ctrl+X to exit nano.

Now you can run it with:

sudo update

Things that you might want to change

Feel free to customize anything in it that you don't like. You can even add new commands to it to do additional upgrade-related housekeeping tasks.

Note that this uses apt full-upgrade rather than apt upgrade, which can remove packages. It also uses apt autoremove --purge which removes packages that are supposedly no longer needed (like any kernels older than the latest two) along with their configuration files.

Note also that none of the lines requires sudo because we're running the entire script with sudo, so leave that out.

Here are what the commands do:

• Requires running the script with sudo (the if-fi block).


• Continues on to further commands even if there's an error in one command (set +e).


• Deletes the firmware (e.g., BIOS) update metadata, because it's giving me AppStream errors (we download it fresh below, so this isn't as problematic as it initially appears to be).


• Updates your snaps to their latest versions.


• Updates the APT package information.


• Updates the AppStream metadata.


• Updates apt-file's metadata. apt-file list package-name is a nice way of finding out what files a package installs (alternatively, dpkg -S /path/to/file is a nice way of finding out which package a file belongs to).


• Does an APT full-upgrade.


• Removes newly-unnecessary packages and their configuration files.


• Deletes any APT package files that were downloaded and left behind.


• Updates the firmware update metadata.


• Installs any new firmware updates.


• Updates the locate command's (a fast way to find files outside of /home) database with the filenames that exist now after all the above updates.


• TRIMs any SSDs. TRIM notifies the SSD itself about disk space that isn't used anymore (e.g., space that was used by deleted files). This helps it to do wear-leveling better.


• Displays a restart needed notice if a restart is needed (e.g., after a new kernel is installed).

Edit your ~/.bashrc file and add this:

update () {

    sudo apt-get update

    sudo apt-get upgrade "$@"

}

Save the file, close any open terminal(s) and open a new terminal.

Test from the command line like this:

$ update -s

Hit:1 http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu xenial InRelease

Hit:2 http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-security InRelease                          

Ign:3 http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb stable InRelease                               

Hit:4 http://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial InRelease                                 

Hit:5 http://ppa.launchpad.net/fossfreedom/indicator-sysmonitor/ubuntu xenial InRelease    

Hit:6 http://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-updates InRelease                         

Hit:7 http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb stable Release                                 

Hit:9 http://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-backports InRelease                       

Hit:10 http://ppa.launchpad.net/peek-developers/stable/ubuntu xenial InRelease

Hit:11 http://ppa.launchpad.net/webupd8team/java/ubuntu xenial InRelease       

Reading package lists... Done                      

Reading package lists... Done

Building dependency tree       

Reading state information... Done

Calculating upgrade... Done

The following packages will be upgraded:

  binutils google-chrome-stable

2 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.

Inst google-chrome-stable [69.0.3497.92-1] (69.0.3497.100-1 Google:1.0/stable [amd64])

Inst binutils [2.26.1-1ubuntu1~16.04.6] (2.26.1-1ubuntu1~16.04.7 Ubuntu:16.04/xenial-updates [amd64])

Conf google-chrome-stable (69.0.3497.100-1 Google:1.0/stable [amd64])

Conf binutils (2.26.1-1ubuntu1~16.04.7 Ubuntu:16.04/xenial-updates [amd64])

You will be prompted for your password if you haven't used the sudo command in awhile.

Another option that I use quite frequently for user-specific scripting is simply:

cd 

mkdir bin

cd bin

nano up

Basically you're making a bin folder that bash looks for in every user and refreshes when you reboot. All you need for a simple update script like you're talking about, is this:

#!/bin/bash

echo "System Upgrade Commencing!"

sudo apt update

sudo apt upgrade

echo "System Upgrade Complete!"

CTRL+X, Y, ENTER

up

And voila. Simple script for updates and upgrades. Personally I add a lot more to my scripts for automation, such as "sudo apt upgrade -y", uptime, date and other tools for post-upgrade "sudo apt autoremove", "sudo apt autoclean" etc. You can also add some complexity by checking for packages that have been improperly installed if you want to query DPKG for possible errors, check your hard disk for faults, or list out the current processes running on your machine. Scripting is a free land of adventure and joy, good luck and have fun.