Is there any way to set the rolling-release Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE) to automatically run 'sudo apt-get dist-upgrade' in the background on a weekly schedule? This will remove the annoyance of having to type the command every day or week.

Yes.

You could crontab it yourself. Or use apticron/cron-apt if available in Mint.

I was able to add the following line to root's crontab:

Now, I will be sure to keep my computer on except for reboots, allowing apt-get to do its job.

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Can you post how you did this? I am running Mint Debian and would like to get this set up. Thanks.


Robin

run: `crontab -e -u root` (as root) and enter the line above (begins with 0 9 ..).

Automatically updating everything is not generally recommended. It can break things at 2 AM, causing you to get paged out of bed. Of course, it's your choice.

Safer to just use cron-apt to download updates, then you can run apt-get dist-upgrade later.

Never a good idea to allow automatic updates in Stable, it's insane to do automatic updates in testing or unstable.

Also a good idea to have both apt-listbugs and apt-listchanges installed.

If you want you can install:
unattended-upgrades - automatic installation of security upgrades


Still not a good idea on testing or unstable.

Easier and safer to just create an alias for apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade -yd

Then look to see what is being updated/installed/removed. If everything looks OK then you run
apt-get dist-upgrade.

Although you should be using aptitude, it is the recommended tool to use in Debian.
aptitude user's manual - http://algebraicthunk.net/~dburrows/...titude/doc/en/

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Excellent advice. I had not thought about this but I usually do not install until the stable release. I have been curious as to what debian is all about plus the fact that I love Mint editions. Thanks.