I'm running a 64-bit install of Xubuntu 12.04. It took me a little while to get Google Earth working. The 64-bit Google earth package requires some 32-bit gtk libraries provided by ia32-libs. However, when I ran a simulation to install ia32-libs and it's dependencies, it wanted to remove a ton of programs, including the xubuntu-desktop meta-package. As a work-around, I used getlibs to get the 32-bit libraries I needed, and then installed Google Earth with the deb package and the --ignore-depend option to dpkg. Awesome, Google Earth is installed and is working great!

Now, however, Update Manager keeps complaining about a "Partial Upgrade", and apt-get won't let me install any new applications. It wants me to do a fix-broken install, but when I do a simulation of apt-get -f install I get some very bad news, they want to uninstall the Google Earth I just worked so hard to install!

$> apt-get -f -s install     
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Correcting dependencies... Done
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  googleearth
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Remv googleearth [6.0.3.2197+0.7.0-1]

TL;DR The --ignore-depends passed to dpkg is not propagating to apt-get, so now I can't install any new applications until I uninstall Google Earth, because of it's missing dependencies (even though it works fine without them). How can I fix this?