On Fri, Aug 18, 2017 at 03:23:21PM +0200, Erik Brangs wrote: > is removal also safe in case of system upgrades? For example, could the > upgrade process neglect to pull in new packages because the meta-package is > missing?
The only meta-package that works like that is the kernel image one. E.g. linux-image-amd64 for the amd64 arch. Package: linux-image-amd64 ... Installed-Size: 16 Depends: linux-image-4.9.0-3-amd64 Description: Linux for 64-bit PCs (meta-package) This package depends on the latest Linux kernel and modules for use on PCs with AMD64, Intel 64 or VIA Nano processors. It's a good idea to keep this one installed, just in case there is ever a kernel ABI bump. Then you'll get the newer kernel ABI package by dist-upgrading. That's more of a thing for testing/unstable users than for stable users, though. ABI bumps in stable should be exceedingly rare.