Ubuntu – How to upgrade a single package using apt-get

apt-get update

Refreshes the repositories and fetches information about packages that are available online.

apt-get upgrade

Downloads and installs updates for all installed packages - as long as it doesn't bother dependencies (install new packages, remove old ones or crosses a repo source (switch a package from one repo to another)).

apt-get dist-upgrade

Does the same as "upgrade" but upgrades a package also when dependencies or sources are changed (something you want to avoid on servers without further testing).

To conclude - an update can break things but it is necessary! So if you are on a desktop you should normally do a:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Without destroying something.

On a server most of the times a:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

should be enough AND security updates should be installed automatically (on servers and desktops)

Update to 16.04

Meanwhile the "apt" wrapper is the standard way in Ubuntu, so the commands are now:

sudo apt update        #to update the repo-information

sudo apt upgrade       #to install all security fixes and changes that doesn't harm the system or change the behaviour

sudo apt full-upgrade  #the new "dist-upgrade" that installs newer versions that can break backwards-compatibility

TL;DR!

Yes, you should update PHP in this example because it is a security fix (this can be seen through the versioning scheme of PHP; it also wouldn't have been pushed into the "upgrade" channel of Ubuntu.)