[vox-tech] Getting apt-get to not install certain packages

[Alex Mandel]

Richard Harke wrote:
> Of course, I still want to install everyhing I want. I want ot install a
> package but apt-get
> wants to install mesa as well. I don't want or need mesa and in fact I
> imagine it will compromise
> my Nvidia installation.
> 
> Richard Harke
> 

That depends entirely on which mesa package it is. Just because your
machine installs some mesa libraries doesn't mean it's going to switch X
to mesa if you've specified to use nvidia.

On my box running with the nvidia drivers I see more than 10 mesa
related packages that are installed, presumably because they were needed
for some apps to work. While mesa may be a video card driver it also
appears to be OpenGL libraries.

If the package has it in the depends category then chances are you would
need the mesa libs to compile it. If it's in the recommended section,
then you can change the apt settings to not install recommended
packages(a default on change on recent ubuntu).

Alex