[SOLVED] Upgrade wants to remove kubuntu-desktop and plasma

[doctordruidphd]

Did the upgrade from 19.04 -> 19.10.

Worked OK, except that it wants to remove kubuntu-dekstop, plasma-desktop, plasma-desktop-data, and other assorted things that will render the system useless:

root@Crynfyd:~# apt full-upgrade
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Calculating upgrade... Done
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
kgamma5 libkfontinst5 libkfontinstui5 libxcb-record0 plasma-desktop-data plasma-thunderbolt
qml-module-qt-labs-settings
Use 'apt autoremove' to remove them.
The following packages will be REMOVED:
kubuntu-desktop plasma-desktop
The following packages have been kept back:
breeze breeze-cursor-theme kde-style-breeze kwin-style-breeze
qml-module-qtquick-controls-styles-breeze
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 2 to remove and 5 not upgraded.
After this operation, 9,541 kB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] exit
Abort.

So far I have been unable to trace why, don't see any package conflicts.
It has been necessary to place a hold on kubuntu-desktop to keep this from happening.
Any ideas how to trace what is doing this?

Edit: I went ahead with this anyway, and it did remove the desktop. I reinstalled it, and now it's back to wanting to remove. Nowhere is there any indication of a package conflict.

[oshunluvr]

kubuntu-desktop is a meta package. Which means it's empty but has a ton of dependencies that install the entire desktop set of packages. It will be removed if you ever remove a package listed as a depends of the desktop package, but will not wipe out your KDE/Plasma install. I'm not using kubuntu at the moment, but this won't kill your system. It's likely that somewhere in the upgrade a package has been removed that is causing the meta package to go away.

If this concerns you , wait a few more hours or days and re-try the upgrade and see if it still happens. Remember you're using a beta/new release.

[doctordruidphd]

The following packages will be REMOVED:
kubuntu-desktop plasma-desktop

Which, followed by full-upgrade, removed plasma-desktop-data, that did kill the desktop.

But that's a good point, maybe just leave it as it is and see if it straightens out in a few days. I thought 19.10 was live and no longer beta; am I wrong?

[doctordruidphd]

OK, I think this is figured out. After wiping the new system clean and doing the upgrade again, it still came back wanting to remove kubuntu-desktop. It also refused to update the breeze theme, and some packages related to it. Turns out the problem is that the breeze stuff was downloaded, I believe, from kubuntu-backports or somewhere else ending in -ppa2, which apt thought was a later package than the package of the same number in the ubuntu repositories. So I did a -t installation from the ubuntu universe repository; that installed the breeze stuff, removed some other obsolete kde packages, and quit trying to remove kubuntu-desktop. So I guess all clear now.