Gorkee

There may be times when you have to lock a particular piece of software on your Linux system (this is sometimes called pinning).  Plain and simple, there are certain software packages on your system that you won’t want to upgrade.  The most typical reason for this is that the upgrade ends up breaking something.  I once had a network driver that would break my system every time I tried to upgrade to the latest version.  You can be sure I pinned that baby, and good.

So, how do you do lock your software?  There’s a very easy way to do this that can be found in Gnome.  First, you’ll want to open up the Synaptic Package Manager.  Then you’ll need to search for the software you want to lock.  When you find it, click on it, go to the "Package" menu and select the Lock option.  For some eye candy that will help you visualize what I’m talking about, refer to the image below.  Do you see the software application highlighted in red?  Pretty, isn’t it?  In that bold red line is a software application which is locked on my system.  Even when new updates are released and become available, my software version won’t change - it will not be upgraded, even if it begs.

However, I began to realize a certain problem with this method.  That is, the lock does not get carried over if you decide to upgrade your system through the command line by typing apt-get upgrade (note: an apt-get update should be performed first before the apt-get upgrade).

"What’s the big deal?" you say.  Well, plenty.  The command line is where you prove your superiority to others.  If you can become a wizard at the command line, you will become more productive, you will make your friends envious, you will have more power at your fingertips and your wizardry may also get you that dream date.  Well, maybe not that last one.  Dream dates tend to prefer real wizards.

Anyway, you don’t want to give up your command line authority.  Fortunately, there is a simple command you can type to get the GUI Synaptic Package Manager and the CLI (Command Line Interface) apt-get upgrade to play nicely together.

1. Open up the Terminal 
2. Type this: sudo ln -s /var/lib/synaptic/preferences /etc/apt/preferences

The above line will create a new symbolic link from the /var/lib/synaptic/preferences file (used by the Synaptic Package Manager) to the /etc/apt/preferences file (used by the  apt-get command line utility).  Now both of the applications will be pointing to the same preferences file, and the GUI and CLI worlds will be in perfect sync.

I feel confident that this knowledge will help you sleep better at night.  It worked for me.  Now if only I could figure out String Theory…