[Bug 1725861] Re: APT::AutoRemove::SuggestsImportant "false" should be the default

[Steve Langasek]

Balint, if you think this is about disk space, I'm afraid you've missed
my point.  These packages are individually tiny.  The point is that
365MiB of packages is a *lot* of packages - all of which are
unsupported, many of which are no longer available in Ubuntu at all
anymore, each of which represents a change in behavior between an
upgraded system and a newly installed system that causes a combinatoric
explosion of possible configurations in Ubuntu's "supported" upgrade
path - "supported" in quotes, because in practice, any time a user
stumbles because of such a difference, they will categorically told by
the developers to remove the unsupported package.

The default behavior of Ubuntu should give users systems which, on
upgrade, are as well-supported and supportable as new installs.  The
current behavior, in its asymmetry, does not give us that.  The tools
are wrong.

** Changed in: apt (Ubuntu Bionic)
       Status: Incomplete => Triaged

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1725861

Title:
  APT::AutoRemove::SuggestsImportant "false" should be the default

Status in apt package in Ubuntu:
  Triaged
Status in apt source package in Bionic:
  Triaged

Bug description:
  After an upgrade to 17.10, I took a look at how much cruft I had
  accumulated on my system, and started marking various packages 'auto'
  which I know I don't care about keeping installed.

  apt autoremove didn't remove nearly as much stuff as I expected, and
  as I dug down into some of them I found that a number of them were
  being kept because other packages on the system have Suggests:
  referencing them.

  This is asymmetric and wrong.  If Suggested packages are not
  automatically installed by default, then a Suggests should also not
  prevent a package from being automatically removed.

  After a web search led me to 'https://askubuntu.com/questions/351085
  /how-to-remove-recommended-and-suggested-dependencies-of-uninstalled-
  packages', I set 'APT::AutoRemove::SuggestsImportant "false"' in my
  apt config; apt autoremove now wants to remove 365MiB of packages from
  my system.  That is a LOT of cruft that has accumulated over the years
  of upgrades, none of which I have ever asked to be installed and all
  of which were universe or no-longer-available packages.

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