Aptitude
Aptitude in unstable used to work for me. Now I seem to have to press shift+u for it to start upgrading packages. Anyway, I am back to:
hendry@bilbo:~$ sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get -u dist-upgrade
UPDATE: You need to goto into the menu, Options->Misc and select “Automatically upgrade installed packages”.
I don’t understand why that option changed, and it’s bad kudos all the same on such a fine tool :/