apt-get upgrade / dist-upgrade query - any benefit?

[sonicsheppard]

Hello,

I've always kind of worked under the assumption that it was beneficial to keep the Raspberry Pi (firmware?) up to date as much as possible using sudo apt-get upgrade / dist-upgrade, but I was just wondering if this is actually the case, specifically with RetroPie?

Over the last 12+ months, there have been a few cases where performing an upgrade like this has resulted in an emulator/port/driver/script breaking - please see my forum post on OpenXCom as a recent example - https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/6491/openxcom-no-longer-working-after-installing-from-experimental-menu. So can anyone tell me if there is really any benefit to performing an apt-get upgrade / dist-upgrade, even semi-regularly if I am using a Raspberry Pi solely for RetroPie and it's emulator/port functionality?

Thank you very much.

[mrbwa1]

I haven't had any issues with updating. I have heard of sporadic issues with the dist-upgrade, but they have never affected me. Then again, I'm using the binaries and not really using any of the experimental stuff.