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

[Nigel Ridley]

Dave Vincenty wrote:
> Here's something I've wanted to ask for a while.
> 
> Okay, I've been  getting a message when I run "apt-get":
>> The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer 
>> required:
<snip long list of apps>
>> Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them.
> Now, this is a long list, and it tells me this EVERY time I use APT for 
> anything.  I know a few of these are things that were left over after I 
> purged KDE 4.0.0 from my system, and I'm sure a lot of what's on this 
> list could be removed without me even noticing the difference, but 
> "alsa-tools-gui"?  Don't I need that to, like, change volume when I'm 
> not in KDE?  And I certainly don't want to get rid of 
> "xscreensaver-gl-extra" and lose my beautiful bouncing cow.  Plus, I've 
> always wanted to start up SuperKaramba and see if I actually need it for 
> anything.
> 
> So my question is ... is there a way to make it stop telling me to 
> remove packages?  And if I really do need to remove packages, can I pull 
> up a list to autoremove, but pick which ones I want to keep?
> 
> Alternatively, maybe there is something I installed (an optional add-on 
> to APT?) that's meant to remove unused packages to maximize my hard 
> drive space.  I don't think I want to remove such a function ... simply 
> to make it shut up and have it only offer polite suggestions when I 
> decide to see them.
> 
> Thanks in advance.
> 
> 
> ~~~ dave ~~~
> 
> --
> Have you mooed today?
> 
I'm coming in late to this thread but for interest sake I just did an 
'sudo apt-get update'
'sudo apt-get install neverball'
and I got:

nigel at nigels:~$ sudo apt-get install neverball
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer 
required:
   libwmf0.2-7 libgsf-1-common libcroco3 gimp librsvg2-2 gimp-data 
libgsf-1-114
Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them.
The following extra packages will be installed:
   neverdata
The following NEW packages will be installed:
   neverball neverdata
0 upgraded, 2 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 14.6MB of archives.
After unpacking 32.2MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]?

Why would apt want to remove the gimp? I use it all the time! And what 
about the other packages - I probably need them too - and if not how do 
I know? How can I trust apt if it is wanting to remove the gimp that I 
do need?!

Blessings,

Nigel

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