How to prevent certain packages from being installed via upgrade

[phenest]

For example, I've uninstalled gnome-panels because I use AWN and the only way to get rid of the panels completely is to uninstall it. During some updates in the last few days, it got re-installed. I never noticed it in the list of updates, until I rebooted and a panel appeared on the desktop. So I've uninstalled it. Again.

There may be other ways to hide the panels, but what about evolution? I've uninstalled that because I prefer Thunderbird.

This is only a problem when upgrading from one release of Ubuntu to the next.

[xebian]

You can use APT pinning. There are many how2s thru google. You want to 'pin' a package. For example, I compile my arora browser so I don't want any from the repos, so I add these in the /etc/apt/preferences file


Package: arora
Pin: version 0.6
Pin-Priority: 1001