How to create a simple Linux alias to run all of your upgrade commands with a single word

Every day, one of the first things I do on my computer is run an update/upgrade. That process normally consists of three commands, which are:

• sudo apt-get update
• sudo apt-get upgrade -y
• sudo snap refresh

That’s not too much to type. The only problem is that I have to wait for the previous command to stop before I can type the next. Or, I can combine them into one long command like this:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade -y && sudo snap refresh

That combination means I don’t have to wait for one command to complete before typing the next. 

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Even so, that’s a long command to type every morning. 

Fortunately, this is Linux, so there’s always a way to make things easier — and in this case, it’s via aliases.

Simply put, an alias allows you to configure a single word to serve as an alias for a command. So, instead of typing:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade -y && sudo snap refresh

All I have to do is type:

I’m immediately prompted for my sudo password and all three commands will run (one after another), to take care of the update/upgrade/refresh process for me.

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Let me show you how. It’s quite easy and can make your Linux-using life considerably more efficient.

How to create your first Linux alias

What you’ll need: The only thing you’ll need for this process is a running instance of Linux. It doesn’t matter what distribution you use because aliases are available to all of them, from the user-friendly Ubuntu all the way to the fiercely complicated Gentoo. I’ll demonstrate on my current go-to Linux distribution, Ubuntu Budgie.

Open the .bashrc file with the command:

Below, we’ll add our alias, which looks like this:

alias update="sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade -y && sudo snap refresh"

The breakdown is simple:

The word alias informs bash that what follows is an alias. SHORTCUT is the word you want to use for the alias as a shortcut for the command that follows. COMMAND is the actual command you want to use for the alias, wrapped in single quotes.

Save and close the file.

Testing the alias

Don’t close the current terminal window. Instead, open a second terminal (or a new tab in the current window) and type the shortcut we used for the alias (in this case, update). The update command should run. If it does, congratulations, you’ve just created your first Linux alias.

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Remember, however, that if you’re not using an Ubuntu-based distribution, the command you run for the alias will be different. And if your distribution doesn’t use Snap packages, you’ll want to either remove the Snap bit or replace it with the Flatpak refresh command.