Stage 1 · Lesson 6 of 8

Updating and installing packages

Before installing anything, update. On , in or on a desktop, sudo apt update refreshes the list of packages your knows about. sudo apt upgrade then installs newer versions of what you already have.

On a Mac, brew update and brew upgrade do the same for . Then install your first tools, such as git, curl, jq and tree, through the package manager rather than from download pages. Regular updates bring security fixes and avoid strange version mismatches.

Common traprunning apt install without updating first and getting "unable to locate package", or ignoring updates for months.

A question to check yourself, an AI practice session and 1 cheat sheet entry come when you add the roadmap to your account. Add it

Resources for this stage

Start with

CourseFree
The Missing Semester of Your CS Education
MIT · Beginner
The first lecture introduces the shell with exercises that work in the macOS terminal

Keep handy

Homebrew
The install command and documentation for the package manager you will use for every tool
Visual Studio Code
The editor used through this roadmap, with official set-up guides for each operating system

Also worth your time

roadmap.sh: LinuxGo deeper
A map of the whole Linux topic, to see how much there is beyond this stage