Lubuntu - removing Abiword etc?

[mastablasta]

Still not clear for me though.<BR>

<BR><BR>I saw a good explanation on forums not long ago. anyway....let's try like this: there is a Lubutnu Desktop (the LXDE) and lubuntu-desktop package. the package tells the system what stuff should be installed to have lubuntu desktop "user experience" as ment by developers of the distribution. <BR><BR>now if you remove abiword from it it won't be the same "user experience" as developers had in mind. so you don't need the lubuntu desktop package anymore. since it is the one telling to the OS that Abiword ought to be be installed.<BR><BR>another way is if oyu had installed for example server or minimal ubutnu where all you would get in the end is a command line. then you could have just installed lxde package. this would give you the LXDE desktop, but not the look and feel of lubuntu . it also wouldn't install abiword and other packages. but you could add them all yourself one by one or all together. or you could simply use a metapackage lubuntu desktop which would search for them and install them all.<BR><BR>

<BR>What will happen at future upgrades?<BR>Do I get Abiword back again every time?

<BR><BR>i believe so, yet. but i am not sure. and you would also keep additionally installed aplications that were not installed via PPA. i decided to go with fresh install since it's strangely faster.


edit: forgot to mention.... YOu can do the mark command in synaptic i believe. you can lock packages and such.

[cortman]

For me the reason I mark metapackages as manually installed is so that it doesn't remove the metapackage, then realize that all the dependencies are still there but are now "unneeded" since the package that depended on them is gone.
Marking it manually prevents catastrophes from happening when you run "apt-get autoremove".
I know some distros set some packages to manually installed to prevent this, Crunchbang does for some packages (I'm forgetting which ones now). That could be why some of your packages (@vasa1 @2VC67) are already set to manually installed.

[vasa1]

@cortman, if you have the time, please take a look at Uninstall empathy without affecting dependencies. OP was trying to remove Empathy without bringing down the house. I suggested the use of marking stuff "manual" but it didn't work.