APT Is Nagging Me To Remove Things I Don't Want To Remove

[Derek Broughton]

Dave Vincenty wrote:

> Donn wrote:
>> ...
>> Try the kubuntu-desktop trick mentioned by Luke first.
> Okay, I installed kubuntu-desktop again, ...
> the important thing is apt-get isn't 
> telling me to remove things anymore.

OK, so it worked - and then...
 
> Then, I went with Donn's suggestion.  Here's what aptitude wanted to do:
>> The following packages are unused and will be REMOVED:
> [Same list as before]

Why would you do that after Donn warned you that it wasn't really safe to
mix apt-get and aptitude?

> I don't really think I want to continue if it's going to get rid of so
> much stuff.
> 
> I guess I could just ignore it, but why does it want to remove all those
> packages?

Because they're marked as Autoinstalled.
 
> Is there a way to change what APT thinks ought to be removed?

I'm leery of telling you what you need to do to stop aptitude wanting to
remove them, because history indicates you'd try it :-)  "apt" doesn't
think anything needs to be removed.  You have now got it back into a
consistent state. aptitude has it's own tools for figuring out (better)
what needs to be kept, but that relies on having installed with aptitude in
the first place.  That said, passing that entire list to "aptitude
unmarkauto" would fix aptitude.
-- 
derek