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wfriedwaldgmail.c
November 16th, 2017, 01:08 PM
after running Ubuntu on my little HP laptop for over a year, I still have some very basic questions about OS versions and updates.

* what's the easiest way to tell what OS version I am running?

* what is the best way to implement OS updates? (it seems like a while ago, I would actually see the system automatically downloading and installing updates. Now I have NOT seen that for many months. Is it still making updates invisibly? If not, how do I get it to update?)

* is there any way to "refresh" the OS? Of course, the updates would probably do that. (something like the equivalent of a "safe" restart on a Mac system.) I notice that when playing videos, the system gets a little jittery and shaking occasionally, sort of a burp. Am trying to fix that. That's my main concern, since the primary thing I use this laptop for is powering video presentations.

thanks very much for any feedback!

w

ajgreeny
November 16th, 2017, 06:19 PM
Normally the terminal command
lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 16.04.3 LTS
Release: 16.04
Codename: xenial is what you would use.

I have amended it to give a bit more info by using
lsb_release -dc && echo "Desktop: $DESKTOP_SESSION" && uname -mrn
Description: Ubuntu 16.04.3 LTS
Codename: xenial
Desktop: xubuntu
XubuntuXenial 4.4.0-98-generic x86_64
I have an alias for this longer command in my .bashrc file with
alias version='lsb_release -dc && echo "Desktop: $DESKTOP_SESSION" && uname -mrn'