Upgrading Raspberry Pi3 - addendum

I upgraded my Pi3B+ to Raspi Buster, that was fine,  later I thought to update the packages from the System menu, it showed there was 1050 packages  to update, so kicked it off, running for a while, got to about 80% completed, then stopped,  after that no activity,  I let it sit there for an hour or so, still no further progress, could not get response back of the menus, so eventually pulled the power cable for the Pi 3, plugged it back in, up it came, except it now in command line modes,  peruse the folders, looking very empty.  Desktop files gone,  oh, well, I had not lost anything, as I was still testing and learning how to use it.  Next, I discovered a blog with a complete image for running Direwolf iGate APRS gateway, which is what I wanted to do. I have now started on that. More to follow.