of course, since package updates are causing these problems, i've tried the obvious solution: just don't update packages. this goes about as well as ignoring your tamagotchi: eventually the system shits itself to death. depending on your chosen distro, you either become unable to install new programs at all until you agree to upgrade all the others, or if you wait too long, you get so out of sync that the package manager itself gets confused and tries to destroy your OS instead of upgrading it