[PLASMA 5] Disable auto-update for some programs

[AllesMeins]

I've just switched from Gnome to Plasma and I'm pretty happy. However there is one problem I couldn't find a solution to. I want to keep older versions of some programs (for example I'm not ready to upgrade to the newest Kodi-Version because some Addons are not available yet, same goes for Blender). Under Gnome I used synaptic to lock the package-version and the Gnome-Updater honored it - however Discover does not and keeps nagging me to update Kodi. Is there a way to stop that and still keep the rest of my system up-to-date? Because I just know, some day I'll will forget to uncheck Kodi, Blender and Co and will have a lot of annoying work to downgrade it again...

[GreyGeek]

Personally, I disabled Discover and use muon. My locked files stay locked and the locks are honored.
(I also removed snapd and Chromium because they are both joined at the hip).

[claydoh]

You can use Synaptic in Kubuntu just fine. Or Muon is an alternative, but depending on your Kubuntu version, is becoming rather long in the tooth, and has not seen updates in quote some time now, so there may be some small hiccups with it.
In either case, both have GUIs to do what you want

[jglen490]

Agree with Synaptic or Muon, and the lack of overall utility for Discover.

[Snowhog]

Introduction to Holding Packages - https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Pi...lding_Packages

[Fred47]

I use Discover in LTS and the only app that is updated is Firefox. All I've seen updated is libraries and the such. It's the price you pay for stability.

[AllesMeins]

Introduction to Holding Packages - https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Pi...lding_Packages

Thank you - this is what I did in the fist place but discover isn't honoring it. So I'll try some of the alternatives suggested

[Don B. Cilly]

Another possible alternative is the good old command line. It has advantages... trying is believing :-)
I have a little script (jokingly called Micro-Muon) that runs a few useful apt commands from and kdialog menu.
I basically use nothing else for updates and packages - except some very rare instances of Synaptic.

Or just add the line
alias upd='sudo apt update && sudo apt full-upgrade' to your ~/.bashrc file - and then, to have it take effect immediately - source .bashrc
so every time you type upd [enter] it will do the upgrade thing - giving you helpful information in the process.

I also added ("at my own risk", yes :-) the line
<my user> ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:/usr/sbin/apt
to /etc/sudoers (using visudo, obviously) so apt commands run without typing a password.
Needless to say, I have an icon in my dock for it :-)

[jglen490]

The alias is great idea.

... so apt commands run without typing a password ...

Wow ...

Never a good idea, and in my opinion never a good choice. Updates occur infrequently, password entry is not a difficult task.

[jlittle]

Never a good idea, and in my opinion never a good choice.

Opinions vary on that. IMO it depends on the circumstances.

Updates occur infrequently,

Sometimes several times a week... it depends on how many packages are installed.

password entry is not a difficult task.

That suggests your passphrase is not very long; one word is typically not enough.

[jglen490]

Regardless of complexity or length, security that is used is far better than none.