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Fifi Cek
Asked: 2018-08-27 07:22:01 +0800 CST

GNOME gui gone on apt-get autoremove

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Found existing questions with matching headline are dated deep in the past so me considers them as unrelated.

One of first operations for Ubuntu machine here after upgrade to Bionic B. completed (from 16.04.x LTE) was to start sudo apt-get autoremove. Unfortunately that operation resulted in GUI typical for Beaver B. been gone, I am no GNOME nor Desktop env. expert, so hard for me to use here proper technical terms. Bionic B. looked like be free from GNOME and that stack.

Today, few weeks later, autoremove is pending again as storage space goes to limits due to numerous and frequently kernel updates. I afraid if I do it now again Bionic B. typical look&feel goes away. Attached is picture which lists items autoremove attempts to delete. Can one see here suspicious points?

ttt@comp22:~$ sudo apt-get autoremove
[sudo] password for ttt: 
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  breeze-icon-theme fonts-dejavu fonts-dejavu-extra gir1.2-geocodeglib-1.0 gnome-todo-common icoutils kde-runtime kde-runtime-data kde-style-breeze
  kde-style-breeze-qt4 kdelibs-bin kdelibs5-data kdelibs5-plugins kdiff3-doc kdoctools libattica0.4 libdlrestrictions1 libedataserverui-1.2-2 libgnome-todo
  libgpgme++2v5 libkactivities6 libkcmutils4 libkde3support4 libkdeclarative5 libkdecore5 libkdesu5 libkdeui5 libkdewebkit5 libkdnssd4 libkemoticons4
  libkf5style5 libkfile4 libkhtml5 libkio5 libkjsapi4 libkjsembed4 libkmediaplayer4 libknewstuff3-4 libknotifyconfig4 libkntlm4 libkparts4 libkpty4
  libkrosscore4 libktexteditor4 libkxmlrpcclient4 libntrack-qt4-1 libntrack0 libphonon4 libplasma3 libpolkit-qt-1-1 libqca2 libqca2-plugins libqt4-qt3support
  libsolid4 libstreamanalyzer0v5 libstreams0v5 libthreadweaver4 ntrack-module-libnl-0 oxygen-icon-theme phonon phonon-backend-gstreamer
  phonon-backend-gstreamer-common plasma-scriptengine-javascript
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 63 to remove and 2 not upgraded.
After this operation, 164 MB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n]
gnome gui 18.04

1 Answers

  1. I had a related problem, see "dist-upgrade wants to remove kubuntu_desktop". Based on some research (and help on this forum), I see two possible reasons for your problem.

    1) Maybe the KDE gui is not listed as your preferred desktop environment and there is no other reason why it should be kept on your system. You can check this by issuing ls /usr/share/xsessions and see what your system is currently using as your desktop. If this is not plasma.desktop, you might just want to manually install it by saying sudo apt install kubuntu-desktop. On the other hand, if you want to use gnome, it is maybe ok that your system wants to auto-remove kde?

    2) In my case, there was a conflict between a graphics driver component and kde. This might happen if you have installed a proprietary graphics driver, such as fglrx. You might want to check your /etc/apt/sources.list.d for any ppa sources you might have installed (in my case dokomix-ubuntu-fglrx-bionic-bionic.list). If this is the case, you might revert to the native driver and remove the ppa.

    There might be other driver updates (or other package updates) that are not compatible with kde and come with another desktop environment - which could lead the the removal of kde. You can check this by doing a sudo apt dist-upgrade and see if there are any packages being held back. These might be the culprit.

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