What exactly is the difference between update-manager -d and normal apt-get?

Posted by jldugger on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by jldugger
Published on 2010-03-31T19:46:49Z Indexed on 2010/03/31 20:43 UTC
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ubuntu

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dist-upgrade

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upgrading

The official recommendation of Ubuntu is to use sudo do-release-upgrade to do an online upgrade from one version to the next. Historically many of my Debianite friends and myself have simply altered apt's sources.list and run apt-get dist-upgrade.

I follow Ubuntu's recommendations, but I've always wondered what the magic difference between these two processes is. What, exactly, does do-release-upgrade do, on say an upgrade from 9.04 to 9.10? (Examples from other releases welcome.)

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