Tried to search and cannot find any. Worth a try but I guess it would be WONTFIXed as 'not supported on device, use package manager to upgrade'.
Not sure, will you disable rm command too? rm is also quite dangerous. And sometimes there may be use for apt-get dist-upgrade if you know what you are doing.

In the downloaded ubuntu I had running it wasn´t there, and that is really besides the point. The point being that 34 installation files needed to be run, which is rediculous.

That´s about as many as I need to run on my laptop to completely reinstall windows and all drivers and most used software.

By installer files do you mean .deb packages? If so you're importing your unfortunate experience of Windows' broken installation model, and finding that it doesn't work. If you want to install something, just ask the package manager and let it do all the work - you don't have to go ferreting around the net for 'installers' yourself.

Then you were either not running Ubuntu or some ancient, unsupported version. It is even in Main in Ubuntu Dapper Drake 6.06LTS (more than 3 years old).

There is no need to 'run 34 installation files'. It'll just download the .deb files for you and install those. Nothing more, nothing less. A child can do that, its simple point and click. Although it should be installed by default already!

Since he said it's a VM I suspect he may have a somewhat stripped out appliance type setup rather than a full standard install.

Possible, but then it isn't Ubuntu; it is something else. Prime example of why trademarks are important and indeed, I don't see VMs listed here as download option. Could also be possible he had Kubuntu or something which probably comes with KDE's office program, KOffice.

apt-get dist-upgrade brakes down because

1) there is a libffi5 upgrade in maemo extras
2) there is a explicit depency on specific libffi5 version in the "tag-all" metapackage (mp-fremantle-generic-pr)
3) apt-get dist-upgrade decides to pull out mp-fremantle-generic-pr in favour or installing new libffi5
4) apt-get notices that a big bunch of packages can now be removed as only mp-fremantle-generic-pr depended on them

I think apt is being buggy at step #4, there should be no reason to remove those packages. Still, some protections should be set:

1) mark essential packages essential (duh) and apt won't remove them
2) maemo extras should refuse packages that are already included in the image...

rm is potentially dangerous in the wrong hands, why not remove that too?
Sharp tools have fantastic uses in the right hands, but can still chop your fingers off.


He may mean ubuntu server, where it is not installed by default. That said, it can still be installed by specifying a single Openoffice.org (I think) page to apt-get or by downloading the dependencies and letting dpkg sort them out.

OK, let me ask the question a different way: does apt-get dist-upgrade have any useful purpose in Maemo?

There is a difference between something that's known to be destructive working as designed, and something that's supposed to be safe but then misbehaves.

Anyway, it seems that the core of the problem is a package in extras that tries to upgrade a core package in an entirely broken manner. If that's all it is then that package simply needs nuking - it's buggy. Equally the process that allowed it to get in there in the first place could probably use some attention.

In some respects it's lucky this happened this way; it seems that the reason that apt-get upgrade and the GUI package manager don't install this update is because of the large and destructive side effects caused by the dependency information. If someone were to drop a package into extras that would cleanly upgrade a core package without needing to uninstall anything it sounds like it would simply get installed. As a matter of policy, should it really be possible to override core packages from extras at all?