[patrickgzill]

That is right, apt-get update only updates the list. apt-get upgrade upgrade currently installed packages to the latest version.

If you want to do it all on one line, "apt-get update && apt-get upgrade" is the answer.

The && means "run the second command only if the first command completes without an error" .

[vog]

Note that on modern Debian systems, aptitude is preferable to apt-get because it has better dependency resolution etc:

    aptitude update && aptitude safe-upgrade

You can also run aptitude without any arguments which starts a nice text UI:

    aptitude