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I am running Debian Jessie, and this is the content of my sources.list file:

deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian jessie main contrib non-free
deb http://security.debian.org/ jessie/updates main contrib non-free

I can update the system with apt-get update and apt-get upgrade from the command line with no problem. However, when I try to update from synaptic (the GUI package manager), using the Mark All Upgrades button, I get lots of suggested changes, including the removal of gnome, gnome-core, and others:

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These are the contents of synaptic's software sources settings:

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So, the question is: why are the suggested upgrades from apt-get and synaptic different? Thanks for your help!

fixer1234
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Milo
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2 Answers2

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Synaptic is a GUI front-end for the apt-get application and it uses the apt-get dist-upgrade feature for its upgrading by default as opposed to apt-get upgrade that you are using from the command line.

Source: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SynapticHowto

The reason the recommendations from the processes are different is that dist-upgrade tries to intelligently resolve package dependencies and any issues more deeply than the generic upgrade feature.

In my own experience, I have noticed massive removal recommendations like the ones shown when I am removing/changing elements in different desktop environments.

Alex Tsankov
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When you install (or upgrade) a package with apt-get, recommended packages are installed automatically, whereas suggested packages are not installed. This can be changed by using the options --no-install-recommends and/or --install-suggests. On the other hand, synaptic has an option for automatically installing recommended packages in its Settings dialog. Normally, this could be the only reason I can think of for the different behavior of the two package managers.

What strikes me as odd is that synaptic reports your ftp.debian.org and security.debian.org sources as "other software". Assuming you are on jessie, they should be your main, officially supported software sources. It seems to me, therefore, that synaptic is somehow confused to think that you're still on wheezy and this is the reason why it tries to mess up with your installed packages.

nickie
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