Scribblings of a Techie
Memoirs of LCA
On the first night I arrived in Christchurch, New Zealand for Linux.conf.au 2019, a group of around a dozen attendees went to dinner. Amongst them were Steve Hanley and Hugh Blemmings, whom I have known since the early 2000’s at various LCAs around the region. They asked for some memoirs of LCA – something small; what follows was my throughts, far longer than expected
Continue reading “20 Years of Linux.conf.au [Memoirs]”Time to update installed applications on your workstation
While everyone is making promises to themselves for the new year, its probably time to do some well earnde maintenance on your own laptop: applying the current versions of applications installed on your laptop.
How? Easy.
If you have a Linux system, its probably as simple as apt-get update && apt-get upgrade. You’ll need to look out for major Linux distribution updates (eg, Debian Jessie -> Stretch), as well as any package updates that have dependencies on new, previously not locally installed libraries.
If you’re prompted for configuration file changes, you’ll want to merge any local settings into the package-provided config files.
One method is to look at your own list of installed applications. Click the start button, and search for “Add or Remove Applications”. The list should appear, such as below.
Then its a case of finding the current version of each application you have. Unfortunately there is no easy way to automate this, given the lack of a consistent repository, download URL or metadata where new installers are available form. So, search for the app, find the download, and then run it.
Some of my favourite ones to update are:
It’s also nice to remove applications you no longer need installed. This lowers your risk, and future maintenance tasks like this one.