Faulty Software Updater on 16.04

[Paul Smith]

On Sat, 2017-10-07 at 00:54 +0800, Bret Busby wrote:
> The problem remains that I can not now update the system without
> updating all packages.
> 
> Previously, the option was available to do a system update, without
> updating all of the packages, involving the option of deselecting
> packages to be updated. That option is no longer available.

It would be helpful if you could define more clearly what you mean by
"update the system".

>From your previous posts it seems that you want to update the packages
on your system but you don't want to upgrade to a newer Ubuntu release.
 That is easily accomplished via "sudo apt upgrade", or "sudo apt dist-
upgrade" or "sudo apt full-upgrade" if you prefer.  As already
described, none of these things will upgrade you to a newer Ubuntu
release.

Here it seems like what you want instead is to upgrade one specific
package or set of packages, without upgrading other packages that may
have upgrades available for your Ubuntu release.

If you just want one package (and its prerequisites/dependencies) to be
upgraded, you could try "sudo apt install <pkg>".

Else maybe you can provide a more detailed explanation of what you want
to do.