How can I retain my pidgin installation when upgrading to the newer versions of ubuntu?

Question

Every time I have upgraded to the newest version of Ubuntu, it removes pidgin during the upgrade and gives me empathy, I don't want empathy, hence why I downloaded pidgin. Is there a way to make it leave pidgin alone when upgrading?

Answer 1

If Pidgin is removed during the release upgrade, just install it back, after the upgrade is complete.

There's two common ways to install Pidgin. You may have...

• ...installed it from the official software sources in Ubuntu. If you found pidgin in the Software Center or ran sudo apt-get install pidgin, that is the case.

  This is also the case if Pidgin was already installed when you installed Ubuntu (which is the case for some versions of Ubuntu and some Ubuntu derivatives).

  If this is the case, just install the pidgin package again.

• ...installed the version of Pidgin provided by the PPA that the upstream developers officially recommend.

  If that's how you installed Pidgin, it makes sense that it was uninstalled when you upgraded, as third-party software sources (like PPA's) are disabled when you upgrade from one Ubuntu release to another, and sometimes the software they provide is uninstalled to make way for official software. (Official software can be uninstalled too, so that you've had this problem does not mean you installed Pidgin from the PPA.)

  One good way to install Pidgin back from the PPA is to enable the PPA and install the package from there (this avoids having to download the right .deb package first):

  sudo add-apt-repository ppa:pidgin-developers/ppa
  sudo apt-get update
  sudo apt-get install pidgin