Xfce Forum

Blacklight

Banned

Registered: 2026-08-14

Posts: 40

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Apt Pinning Xfce

Okay so now I've tested "Apt Pinning Xfce"

Here's what I tried

First I started with an Xfce Debian Bullseye install

fully upgraded everything

then I tried making files in here: /etc/apt/preferences.d/

like this xfce4.pref xfdesktop4.pref mousepad.pref

with contents like this

Package: *mousepad*
Pin: version *
Pin-Priority: -1

I thought I could set all the *xfce4* packages to version 4.16*
but then I learned they actually don't all share the same versioning
so I used version * and set the Pin-Priority to -1 to prevent them from upgrading

(another method would of been setting the pin to bullseye like: Pin: a=bullseye)

then I upgraded to Bookworm with apt dist-upgrade

Everything was working except xfdesktop4 which didnt show my wallpaper anymore

and basically debian itself was broken from this procedure and apt wanted to remove a ton of things, after doing an apt upgrade (in other words, mainly the package manager and xfdesktop couldn't handle having all of Xfce pinned, Xfce itself worked great)

so I removed the files in /etc/apt/preferences.d/ for xfce and xfdesktop

and left the preferences file for mousepad, and now basically I've fixed mousepad by holding it back,
so for one or a couple programs apt pinning works great... now mousepad has visible line numbers with a custom gtk theme, it usually loses those sometime between 12/13 debian

that's basically it, it requires a narrow focus, and it can absolutely work, if you know what specific parts of xfce you want to try to pin. when I saw apt was broken, I simply deleted the preferences files and did apt update again, and everything was fine.

firefox 140 is a prime example of how useful it is, or when programs develop bugs or anti-features in later versions. Now I've got firefox-esr locked down at version 140* and so I wont ever get the secret AI backdoor upgrades that start rolling out in 141+

Last edited by Blacklight (2026-08-23 00:29:21)

CwF

Moderator

Registered: 2018-01-28

Posts: 348

Re: Apt Pinning Xfce

To our future readers, these are exceptionally bad ideas.

This is a knowledge loop where the knowledge of why this is a bad idea would prevent the idea from being imagined.

Dependencies
There is a reason why major named releases exist. Major underpinnings are only changed at that point. Legacy code may make it to the next major release, but will eventually be dropped. This is the cause of transient bloat as these transitions happen. If we were to trace the dependencies of earlier packages we would find dead ends requiring custom compiling.

@Blacklight These forums are not intended to be your personal diary of discovery. These forums have a high signal to noise ratio. I would appreciate it if you do not degrade that stat...