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

[girardhenri at free.fr]

When I trust it (i believe it better than me)
I often do a lot of job to recover all what I need
specially when apt or aptitude remove kubuntu-desktop or kdebase-bin-kde3
Up to now i still walk in fog with those tools
but at the end they are better than me :)


Nigel Ridley wrote:
> Derek Broughton wrote:
>   
>> D. Michael McIntyre wrote:
>>
>>     
>>> On Saturday 26 January 2008, Nigel Ridley wrote:
>>>       
>>>> So it would seem that all one needs to do is manually install the
>>>> packages that apt wants you to autoremove (without needing to
>>>> uninstall/remove them first) ! 
>>>>         
>>> Quite so.
>>>
>>>       
>>>> - you can highlight the entire list in the
>>>> consol window, type 'sudo apt-get install ' (with the added space) and
>>>> then middle mouse button to paste the entire list, then hit enter.
>>>>         
>>> You can, sure.  I operate with the idea that I want to set as little as
>>> possible to manual installed, because it helps with cruft problems later
>>> on during upgrades, but this isn't a big deal.
>>>       
>> But on that note, I'd point out that Nigel almost certainly did _not_ need
>> the lib* packages he just manually installed.  
>>
>> lib packages regularly become outdated, because it is often necessary to
>> have a libthing1 and a libthing2 package to support different versions
>> (binary interfaces) of programs that depend on "thing".  
>>
>> For instance we have:
>>
>> wotsit - depends thing > 1.5 < 2.0
>> whosit - depends thing >= 2.0
>> thing - depends libthing
>>
>> So we get: libthing1 & libthing2 which are binary incompatible versions of
>> the same libthing package, and you can then have wotsit and whosit
>> installed at the same time.  When wotsit gets updated to use thing 2.0 and
>> libthing2, libthing1 will become eligible for autoremoval.
>>
>> One of the big clues is that any lib*N package, where N is an integer that's
>> actually part of the package name and not part of the version, is likely
>> safe to remove if apt says so (but looking to see if you have some other
>> package with the same name, except for the integer suffix, would be
>> advisable :-) )
>>     
>
> That's all well and good - but how am I to *know* that I don't need such 
> and such lib - trust apt - when it wants to remove the gimp, which I 
> know that I do need and use?
> It's OK if one is familiar with the system and understands differing lib 
> versions but what about the like of us that are just wanting to trust 
> the package manager?
>
> Yours a little peeved...
>
> Nigel
>
>