Re:The Decline of Usability
by necovek on Sunday April 19, 2020 @08:13AM
(#22915346)
apt will not automatically remove dependencies either.
I suspect the OP already had ubuntu-desktop package removed for some other reason, and there was no direct dependency on evolution-data-server for gdm: it will only remove dependencies which no other still-installed package depends on. That might still mean a packaging bug (but at least on 18.04, attempting to remove evolution-data-server prompts me how it's going to remove gdm3 too — sure, it's short and easily missed; attempting to remove evolution does not attempt to remove evolution-data-server since a bunch of other stuff depends on it like gnome-calendar too).
In any case, apt will prompt you about all the packages you are about to remove (unless you pass "-y(es)" to it).
I suspect the OP already had ubuntu-desktop package removed for some other reason, and there was no direct dependency on evolution-data-server for gdm: it will only remove dependencies which no other still-installed package depends on. That might still mean a packaging bug (but at least on 18.04, attempting to remove evolution-data-server prompts me how it's going to remove gdm3 too — sure, it's short and easily missed; attempting to remove evolution does not attempt to remove evolution-data-server since a bunch of other stuff depends on it like gnome-calendar too).
In any case, apt will prompt you about all the packages you are about to remove (unless you pass "-y(es)" to it).