Linux

Documentation for updateself 2.1.0. Versioned source.

Linux

The native backend comes from distribution identity, not merely from installed package-manager commands.

Family	Normal update
Debian/Ubuntu and derivatives	APT refresh and upgrade
Fedora/RHEL/Rocky/Alma/CentOS Stream	DNF5/DNF upgrade, with YUM fallback
Arch/Manjaro/EndeavourOS	Complete Pacman -Syu transaction
openSUSE Leap/SLES	Zypper refresh/update
openSUSE Tumbleweed	Zypper refresh/dup
Alpine	APK refresh/upgrade
Void	XBPS bootstrap and remaining updates
Gentoo	Portage sync, world and preserved rebuild
Slackware	Slackpkg refresh, new packages and upgrades

updateself --only system --dry-run
updateself --only system --ask
updateself --only system --full-upgrade --ask
updateself --only snap,flatpak --ask
updateself --include npm,cargo,aur --ask

--full-upgrade selects APT dist-upgrade and may remove packages. --cleanup enables backend-specific cleanup after successful prerequisites. Arch orphan deletion, Gentoo depclean and Slackware clean-system remain manual review tasks.

Snap refreshes system packages. Flatpak covers default/named system installations and the selected non-root user's installation. With root, use --user alice for that account's user tools; other accounts are not scanned. --cleanup can remove unused Flatpak runtimes after updates succeed.

Existing repositories, release branches, holds and pins are retained. No distro migration or repository change is made. OSTree/bootc/transactional native updates are currently unsupported; app components can still run. See Nix for NixOS, Supported Tools and Platform Support.