Mint Meta Packages

[kandieyman]

I have noticed that various software packages in Linux Mint have uncommon (i.e. dissimilar to other debian-based distros, for example Ubuntu) dependencies. The most common is mint-meta-*. I would like to remove some packages (e.g. Thunderbird because I prefer Evolution), but I do not know whether it is safe to remove these meta packages.

[Aging Technogeek]

The Mint-meta package is a sort of supervisor package that is used to install a large group of packages at one time. once everything is installed it may be safely removed.

[kandieyman]

At the risk of sounding repetitive, do those packages matter for upgrading? I know, for example, the Ubuntu will continue to work if you remove the ubuntu-desktop package, but it precludes you from being able to receive certain important upgrades. Is that also the case for mint-meta-*?

[emorrp1]

It's actually kind of the other way round, mint-meta-* depend on all the packages mint uses in its default installs, in exactly the same way as the *buntu-desktop packages (so I don't know what you're getting at with the dissimilarity). Both can be safely removed, and will be unlikely to affect the day-to-day running of mint, but can in theory prevent an easy upgrade, e.g. felicia -> gloria, mintWelcome was added, which would not have been installed properly on upgrade without the meta packages, but isn't an issue if you always do a fresh install anyway. I hope this is clear enough.