I installed Ubuntu "breezy" on a home computer just yesterday and was familiarizing myself with it. I then clicked on the little update button and there is a mind boggling amount of updates. Do i download them all or are there certian ones i need and others to avoid? Im new to Linux so sorry for being so vague. Any help is greatly appreciated.

Mostly everything in the install CD will need to be updated. As you use it, you will learn what things you use.

Also look at:
http://easyubuntu.freecontrib.org/
http://easylinux.info/wiki/Ubuntu

Ok, thanks alot for the info.

Killer McCoy:

Ubuntu uses an auto-update facility wrapped around apt-get of Debian fame and its graphical front-end, Synaptic. If you're told that there are necessary updates, you're obviously already connected to the internet; if you have broadband and flatrate, just let it do its thing. As Simon Bridge pointed out, since Breezy has been out for almost half a year, many packages will need an update by now, so it's only natural to experience that when doing a fresh install at this point.

I've got three installations of Breezy on various machines, and it never failed to update everything properly. However, the bigger the number of the updates necessary, the bigger the chance of something breaking, but I wouldn't consider that an imminent threat - you've just installed it, and it's part of your getting to know your system to risk an auto-update.

Yeah - actually, I'm quite pleased that Killer has managed to avoid all the problems newbies usually run into to get this far. And the underlying question: "do I need all this stuff?" is reasonably intellegent - shows he's thinking about his system and questioning it.

At this stage you will probably want more things rather than less.

A useful tip - if you do not have broadband ... many internet cafes will cater to gamers, and let you bring your box along and plug into their network. I did all my updates this way (about monthly) when I first got started.

You don't HAVE TO do any of the updates....but it usually can't do any harm. A lot of the stuff is simply the latest version of a library, utility, etc. In some case, you might install SW that depends on---eg--the most currect version of stdlibc. Keeping up to date avoids looking for the particular package at the time of update.

Thanks for all the comments.You guys have been really helpful. oh, and yes i do have broadband so ill just let it do its thing. Thanks again.

pixellany:

I agree, but there have been some security updates that were rather critical, so I'd really advice to do the updates. Trying to do only the critical ones may result in more problems than doing the whole bunch - at least from a newbie's point of view. apt-get helps avoiding dependency hell, and I think that's what's also best kept from a newbie's first experiences...