distributions: UBUNTU vs DEBIAN

[Antony Gelberg]

Daniel Carrera wrote:
> Antony Gelberg wrote:
> 
>> Perhaps ubuntu-desktop was removed and you didn't notice?
> 
> 
> That's possible, though I think I would have noticed. Especially since I 
> did this a few days ago. I just checked and aptitude gives me 
> conflicting answers:
> 
> $ sudo aptitude search ubuntu-desktop | egrep '\Wubuntu'
> pi  ubuntu-desktop                  - The Ubuntu desktop system
> 
> The 'i' means "installed" and the 'p' means "not installed" :P

What does the line look like if you search for the package in 
interactive aptitude?

NB You don't need sudo for aptitude search.

> http://people.debian.org/~dburrows/aptitude-doc/en/ch02s02s02.html
> 
> $ sudo aptitude search ~i | egrep '\Wubuntu-desktop'
> $ sudo aptitude search ~g | egrep '\Wubuntu-desktop'
> $
> 
> Here the first line searches through installed packages and the second 
> through uninstalled packages. Neither list shows 'ubuntu-desktop' :P
> 
> Maybe this is a bug?
> 
> In any event, there's no harm in an expert removing ubuntu-desktop. 
> That's just a metapackage, it doesn't actually do anything.

Well it does do something.  It ensures that certain packages are 
installed.  I believe the upgrade release notes specify that this 
package should be installed before upgrading.

> I'm interested to know why my Ubuntu things that 'ubuntu-desktop' is 
> both installed and un-installed.

What does dpkg -l ubuntu-desktop report?