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I have asked a similar question a couple of years ago, but it wasn't related to a system upgrade and more focused on potentially malicious software or licensing issues.

Since I am considering regularly upgrading to minor, non-LTS Releases, I was wondering what happens to installed programs that have no supported package in the Release repository anymore with a do-release-upgrade or apt dist-upgrade.

As an example, Amarok currently has no package in any repository after 18.04, since Qt4-based software had been removed lately. What would have happened to my Amarok installation, if I had installed it on 18.04 LTS and upgraded to 18.10?

Would it have been removed from my system on upgrade? Or would it stay on the last package version until a new package was available?

My previous question suggests that it would likely stay in the last supported version on my system, but I believe to have read that some software was removed on a system upgrade.

Prototype700
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    Unsupported packages will be removed by `do-release-upgrade`. `dist-upgrade` is unrelated to upgrading from one release to another`. – Pilot6 Dec 29 '19 at 13:44
  • Hello Pilot6, okay, that's interesting. I was wondering where the difference might be, because https://help.ubuntu.com/lts/serverguide/installing-upgrading.html still lists `dist-upgrade` as a way to upgrade releases. – Prototype700 Dec 29 '19 at 14:09
  • https://askubuntu.com/questions/81585/what-is-dist-upgrade-and-why-does-it-upgrade-more-than-upgrade – Pilot6 Dec 29 '19 at 14:28
  • I don't really understand how that question relates to release upgrades. So `dist-upgrade` will remove packages if the dependencies change, but the `sources.list` file still needs to be manually updated, whereas with `do-release-upgrade` that's not the case? How else would there be any changes besides the ones in the release repository? – Prototype700 Dec 29 '19 at 14:46
  • `dist-upgrade` doesn't upgrade to a new release, that's you need to understand. It is deprecated now and replaced by `full-upgrade` probably not to confuse people ;-) – Pilot6 Dec 29 '19 at 14:48
  • If you *specified* Amarok to be installed (apt-mark:auto), then it will be retained. If Amarok was merely dragged in as dependency (apt-mark:manual), then it will be removed. – user535733 Dec 29 '19 at 18:55
  • Would `apt install amarok` constitute as being `apt-mark:auto`? Meaning that even when I `do-release-upgrade` it won't be removed although the package is no longer available? – Prototype700 Dec 29 '19 at 19:25

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