Upgrade without default packages?

[wallywally]

I've just upgraded 10.4 to 10.10 and everything works fine and looks good but I now have the usual palaver of needing to remove some default packages that have been installed but which I don't want such as Empathy and Evolution.

Is there any way to upgrade to a new release without getting all the default software packages?

[andrewthomas]

Remove the ubuntu-desktop package and anything else that you don't want first.