Question: The [AMD Catalyst™ 13.12 Proprietary Linux x86 Display Driver](http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/amdcatalyst13-12linreleasenotes.aspx) can be used with Ubuntu `12.04.2` and `13.04` and the [14.1 Beta](http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/Latest-LINUX-Beta-Driver.aspx) version can be used with Ubuntu `12.04.3` and `13.10`.

Since, the beta version is known to have a lot of issues, I need to use the stable driver. Unfortunately, it is not working with `13.10` as it said in the documentation.

So, I need to download and install `12.04.2` and disable future updates to `12.04.3` for example. 

How I can do this when the version of the Ubuntu that can be downloaded from the [official website](http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop) is `12.04.4` and how can I prevent update to next builds?

Answer: 
You can download old Ubuntu versions from <http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/releases/12.04.2/> 

Now choose the version you want (12.04.2) and be sure if you want it 32 or 64bit Then click on it to download.

Now for the updates you can run the update manager from DASH then go to settings and beside check for updates choose never (see the image below)

![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/DSLMA.png)
In such a case I would pin down the dependencies but let the updates continue. In this manner security issues and high impact bugs in other packages will be dealt with.

In the case of this driver this means: Xserver <=1.14, Kernel <=3.11, Glib <=2.3

The way to do this is described [here](https://serverfault.com/questions/435132/how-to-version-lock-packages-in-ubuntu).

One issue with pinning is that you can not *(that I know of)* pin down to a version which is not available yet *(do not upgrade above 3.5 while current is 3.3)*. So a direct pinning of this dependencies is not possible.

A way to deal with this is to pin down the current versions and if an update of one of these files occurs check if it still meets dependencies. If so, update the pinning, else leave it pinned.

To pin down to 12.04.2 on these dependencies you install 12.04.2 using the [link](http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/releases/12.04.2/) provided by maythux and make a file **/etc/apt/preferences** with the following lines:

```
Package: x-server-common
Pin: version 2:1.11*
Pin-Priority: 550

Package: linux-image-generic*
Pin: version 3.2.*
Pin-Priority: 550

Package: libglib2.0
Pin: version 2.3*
Pin-Priority: 550

```

But the funny part is that looking at the dependencies I see no reason why the driver should not work with 12.04.4
Then looking at all the distro's they say to support it is obvious they made a list of the distro's on the market in the first half of 2013. So probably it is just a list with tested versions.

**If I were you, I would give it a go and install 12.04.4** To be sure it won't break with future updates you put the following lines in the apt preferences file:

```
Package: x-server-common
Pin: version 2:1.11*
Pin-Priority: 550

Package: linux-image-generic*
Pin: version 3.11.*
Pin-Priority: 550

Package: libglib2.0
Pin: version 2.3*
Pin-Priority: 550

```