ATLief's questions

I like to view the changelogs and news of packages before I install their updated versions. I also like to install documentation packages (typically '^.*-doc$') related to software that I don't use (or have installed), but this problem has shown up more generally, too.

Unfortunately the changelogs for these documentation packages often include changes to the main package (changelogs/news of "somepackage-doc" include changes to "somepackage" as well). This is especially frustrating for "security" upgrades that warn about security vulnerabilities and exploits that don't actually affect any of my installed packages (or the updated package(s)).

I'd like to know if there's a way to disable this behaviour (even if that means such packages don't have any listed changes) while still seeing the "real" changes. I've looked through all of the options for the apt-listchanges utility and config file and can't seem to find anything related to this.

I'd like to install both the grub-pc and grub-efi packages so that my server can boot using either method; however, when I try to install one, apt only proceeds if I remove the other.

According to apt info grub-pc:

Replaces: grub, grub-common (<= 1.97~beta2-1), grub-coreboot, grub-efi-amd64, grub-efi-ia32, grub-ieee1275, grub-legacy, grub2 (<< 2.04-1ubuntu12.2)

And apt info grub-efi-amd64:

Replaces: grub, grub-common (<= 1.97~beta2-1), grub-coreboot, grub-efi-ia32, grub-ieee1275, grub-legacy, grub-pc, grub2 (<< 2.04-1ubuntu12.2)

Why is this restriction imposed? Can't both packages co-exist otherwise? And how can I do this anyway?

When I installed Ubuntu 19.10, I chose the "Minimal Installation" option. I figured that the default programs (that are regularly installed with Ubuntu) would be accessible from some meta-package afterwards, but I have yet to find it.

Is there such a meta-package or other way to install the default Ubuntu 19.10 programs without re-installing whole system?

I'd like to uninstall update-notifier-common and implement my own update checking solution, but every time I try, I'm warned that doing so will also uninstall the ubuntu-server package:

apt purge update-notifier-common 
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  ubuntu-server* update-notifier-common*
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 2 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
After this operation, 1460 kB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n]

What function does update-notifier-common provide for ubuntu-server, and why does ubuntu-server depend on it?