Kod dogradnje programskih paketa naredbom apt-get, kao parametar se obično zadaje "upgrade", no ponekad je bolje koristiti "dist-upgrade".

Koja je razlika između naredbi "upgrade" i "dist-upgrade" u sklopu naredbe "apt-get"?

upgrade - povući ce nove verzije paketa, ali ne i pakete s promjenjenim
ovisnostima (Depends: poljima)
dist-upgrade - povući ce novije verzije paketa, kao i pakete s
promjenjenim ovisnostima (Depends: poljima)

Najbolje je pokazati razliku na primjeru poznatoga sendmaila. U jednom trenutku (od
verzije 8.13.0-1), sendmail je razdvojen na više paketa (sendmail,
sendmail-bin, libmilter0, sendmail-base, sensible-mda, rmail, sendmail-doc,
sendmail-cf, libmilter-dev). Zbog toga su se promijenile ovisnosti. Sada Debianov paket sendmail ovisi o novim paketima (Depends: sendmail-base, sendmail-bin, sendmail-cf, sensible-mda, rmail) te se više ne može dograditi naredbom 'apt-get upgrade'.

# apt-get upgrade
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
The following packages have been kept back:
  sendmail
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 1 not upgraded.

U takvim se prilikama preporuča izbor 'apt-get dist-upgrade', makar ne radite stvarnu promjenu distribucije Debiana, niste mijenjali /etc/apt/sources.list.

Vidljivo je da će 'apt-get dist-upgrade' uredno unaprijediti softver i povući nove pakete:

# apt-get dist-upgrade
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
Calculating Upgrade... Done
The following packages will be upgraded:
  sendmail-base sendmail-bin sendmail-cf sensible-mda rmail
5 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
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