I only have a live stick without persistence. When I had problems with updating the solution was given to me to hold back packages from upgrading because they blocked the package installer.
Since then, I've only been using sudo apt update and not sudo apt upgrade and I haven't had any problems. Without the update command the packages I want to install are not found. Before I had always used the upgrade command but it had made the problems. I don't need the newest kernel updates and firmware updates for my Zorin 18 testing purposes. I just want to install some apps and explore the new OS.
Unfortunately, I am not familiar with persistence.