Which updates to install from Update Mgr. Ubuntu 11.04
 

I am wondering how to tell which updates I really need to install from the Update Manager which has about 106 pending right now. I've been up on Natty 11.04 w/ Gnome on my old IBM R32 for about 2 months and installed all updates at first, but then began to question some of them that didn't appear necessary or seemed to be for some older Ubuntu version. I'm not sure how to tell from the descriptions and variations of version numbers which ones actually apply. Some of them seem only to be necessary if I were actually using certain programs, to wit:
Any help on intelligently decoding which are essential packages would be quite welcome. TIA, Tim T.

One good trick is to only install the "security updates", like if it says it's an urgent security bugfix, install it. A lot of linux software updates, you won't even notice any difference if you install the new version or stick with the old one.

What I do is open a root window, and run "apt-get update". Then I do "apt-get upgrade", and it makes a list of software it thinks it will install. Then I say "NO" and don't let it install all that stuff because I don't care. If the list is small and I am not doing anything important with the computer at the time, and I have recent backups, then maybe I say "yes" and let it do the upgrade.

Instead of a big upgrade, I think for example, hmm, I would like that new version of firefox and the new emacs, so I would run: "apt-get install firefox emacs". That makes it much smaller and shorter to just install the software you want. I bet you can figure out a way to do a similar thing using Update Manager.

Thank you much. This is kind of what I was thinking, but it is always nice to check with someone who has been there, whether it's playing with a new OS or driving a tractor. I have some early programming experience (very early), but things have come a long way since a tty, all-caps line printer, and a 300 baud acoustically coupled modem.