8.10 amd64: Upgrade wants to remove mythbuntu-desktop & xfdesktop4

[ppww]

Today's update/upgrade informs me that it intends to remove mythbuntu-desktop and xfdesktop4. My understanding is that the former is the meta-package that contains all mythbuntu packages. Is that correct? This doesn't seem like a safe upgrade to accept.
# apt-get update ; apt-get dist-upgrade
Ign cdrom://Mythbuntu 8.10 _Intrepid Ibex_ - Release amd64 (20081028) intrepid/main Translation-en_US
Ign cdrom://Mythbuntu 8.10 _Intrepid Ibex_ - Release amd64 (20081028) intrepid/multiverse Translation-en_US
Ign cdrom://Mythbuntu 8.10 _Intrepid Ibex_ - Release amd64 (20081028) intrepid/restricted Translation-en_US
Ign cdrom://Mythbuntu 8.10 _Intrepid Ibex_ - Release amd64 (20081028) intrepid/universe Translation-en_US
...
Calculating upgrade... Done
The following packages will be REMOVED:
mythbuntu-desktop xfdesktop4
The following packages will be upgraded:
bind9-host console-setup dnsutils jockey-common jockey-gtk libbind9-40 libdns43
libisc44 libisccc40 libisccfg40 liblwres40 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libpulse0
libshout3 libthunar-vfs-1-2 libx11-6 libx11-data libxfce4mcs-client3
libxfce4mcs-manager3 libxfce4util4 libxfcegui4-4 mousepad network-manager
network-manager-gnome ppp thunar thunar-data xfce4-icon-theme xfce4-mcs-manager
xfce4-mcs-plugins xfce4-mixer xfce4-mixer-alsa xfce4-panel xfce4-session
xfce4-terminal xfce4-utils xfdesktop4-data xfwm4 xkb-data
40 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 2 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 21.7MB of archives.
After this operation, 1774kB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? n
Abort.

[superm1]

Try doing it from synaptic and see if synaptic is a little more vocal about what's wrong. I suspect some stuff is getting copied out of -proposed to -updates currently...

[ppww]

Synaptic shows that mythbuntu-desktop installed=latest (0.31), and it is *not* marked for removal; just a solid green box. Same with xfdesktop4, installed=latest (4.4.2-7ubuntu3), not marked for removal.

Doing an "apt-get --dry-run upgrade" confirms that it would definitely try removing these:
...
Remv mythbuntu-desktop [0.31]
Remv xfdesktop4 [4.4.2-7ubuntu3]
...

Why would there be a discrepancy? A bug in apt-get? Should I trust synaptic to do the right thing in this case?

[superm1]

Don't do dist-upgrades with stable releases. Trust synaptic here. It won't offer it to you since it's removing things that are needed.