If I run:
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
It upgrades all the packages on my system, including LibreOffice, Chrome & Firefox, which for me is undesirable.
How can I tell Ubuntu to only install system patches, whilst allowing me to manually upgrade my applications?
I am using Ubuntu 14.04 x64
You could try the following command
sudo apt-mark hold <package_name>
This will prevent it from being updated when running the usual upgrade command (sudo apt-get upgrade). It should also work in your case. To undo this you can run
sudo apt-mark unhold <package_name>
It probably isnt a good idea to prevent packages from updating. New updates could include security fixes or bug fixes. Preventing these upgrades could be harmful for you system. Also as Pilot6 said in the comments, not upgrading the packages could prevent the applications from working altogethor. so be cautious when you decide to hold packages from upgrades.
