Upgrade using another system

[sakthi]

Can an update of a system be done using another system:

I have a desktop and a laptop both running 8.04. I want to upgrade the desktop using the laptop. I want to get the software state of the desktop and put it in laptop; download all the software updates available with respect to the desktop's software state in the laptop using apt-get; transfer all the new updates to the desktop and install them in the desktop. Can this be done? Kindly advice me....

Thanks in advance!

[dstew]

It used to be there was a service called nonetdebs that would allow you to do something like this, but it is gone. Here is a thread that has some people talking about updating using off-line methods.