Are you a fan of Ubuntu’s (semi-controversial) apt “awareness” feature?
You can’t have failed to notice it by now, not if you use Ubuntu 22.04 LTS and you regularly use apt to check for and install package updates.
For me, the awareness messages appears each time I run apt upgrade or apt dist-upgrade on my Jammy Jellyfish install (thankfully it no longer appears on Ubuntu 22.10, which makes sense: it’s not an LTS release).
Canonical added the feature to enable it to ‘raise awareness’ of critical security issues, and to instruct users on how to mitigate the impact of them (most typically through installing security updates or subscribing to Ubuntu Pro).
Naturally, the feature’s introduction made waves back in October. Some Ubuntu users (particularly those on server and headless systems) were not thrilled to find themselves needing to wade through waffle about Ubuntu Pro subscriptions (which weren’t even applicable/needed at the time).
Others, however, are bothered by the promotional aspect so much as its awkward placement: slap bang in the middle of the apt command output, splitting the command’s status and final output. Like, security updates are one thing but, really, when I run apt I only care about my packages, not news, promos, or anything else.
Long story short, Canonical took the blowback feedback onboard. They clarified their plans. They reworded their message. They honed their scope. And (hurrah) they added info telling us misers (🤭) how to turn the dang thing off entirely — and thus go about out package management tasks in sweet ignorance of security issues.
It’s this latter step that this post (somewhat needlessly) repeats because, as instructed, it’s easy to hide Canonical’s apt “ads”. This “how to” line might not be shown in future when there’s actual “apt news” to relay, hence why I’m sharing it here.
Just open a new terminal window and run:
sudo pro config set apt_news=false
And, et voila: the apt output you want.
Should you change your mind at a later date you can opt-in to see apt command news alerts. Just run the command again but this time set the apt_news value to true.
Whether hiding or showing, the change takes effect immediately.