Whenever Synaptic is mentioned the advice is use apt for package management, which I do but as mentioned in another thread there is one function that I can't find the apt command for, that is to see what new packages have been added to the repro since the last update. While looking for an answer I have discovered wajig it is in the repros
https://wiki.debian.org/Wajig and is a control line wrapper for apt, dpkg , cache etc it looks interesting and to see what is new just use new command, simple. I am going to give it a try replacing apt and synaptic see how it goes.