How to prevent some packages from automatically being removed?

Question

When I install transcriber 1.5.1.1-10 (which is a very old package last updated in 2004), My audio driver package which is current is depreciated to and older one:

Removing libsnack2-alsa (2.2.10-dfsg1-12build1) ...
Selecting previously unselected package libsnack-alsa.

When I try to reinstall libsnack2-alsa, then transcriber is removed. Is there a way to prevent this? Transcriber does not seem to work with the depreciated audio driver anyhow.

Answer 1

You can use apt-mark to mark a package as manually installed so that it will not be automatically removed while removing some other package (because it is a dependency of this package hence is marked as auto installed).

For example, in my computer i am mark-ing zenity as manually installed:

% apt-mark showauto zenity    
zenity

% sudo apt-mark manual zenity
zenity set to manually installed.

% apt-mark showmanual zenity 
zenity

In you case, you need:

sudo apt-mark manual transcriber

Answer 2

sudo apt-mark hold <package>

For example:

sudo apt-mark hold transcriber

The opposite is:

sudo apt-mark unhold <package>

To show what packages are held:

sudo apt-mark showhold