Hi Folks, from time to time I go into the terminal and run the update command:
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade && sudo apt dist-upgrade

It then proceeds to go through what appears to be an endless series on installations, but in the end, it says that nothing was updated, as you can see below.

So I'm at a loss as to what happened several hundred lines of text before that last line? This has occurred the least several times I've run that update command, over the course of a year or more.

So what's going on there? Is anything actually ever updated, or is that just some bizarre programming ritual?

Thanks.

apt update = get available update info
apt upgrade = apply available updates
apt dist-upgrade = apply available updates including potentially breaking removal of conflicting stuff

So everything's being updated and the last command (apt dist-upgrade) finds nothing to do as the previous command has already taken care of it.

I'm your situation I wouldn't run apt dist-upgrade unless apt upgrade fails and you understand why.