Thank you for your bug. That's not specific to gdm and a feature, files installed to /etc are usually "conffiles", which means they respect administrator changes and are not replaced by the package version. You can try the dpkg --force-confnew option to reinstall it by example
** Changed in: gdm (Ubuntu) Assignee: (unassigned) => Ubuntu Desktop Bugs Status: Unconfirmed => Rejected -- remove /etc/init.d/gdm and it can't be reinstalled https://launchpad.net/bugs/76556 -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs