Yup, I’m really talking about upgrading, I doubt there would be a problem with a fresh 16.04 install. I guess it has to do with cascading dependencies and it might even be related to the order in which Mate installs the packages; i.e. if the new packages were installed in the right order, I’m pretty sure that a problematic dependancy would no trigger and install a lot of unrelated stuff.
I’ve just tried again in my VM in order to take pictures of the list of 329 new packages it wants to install with the upgrade. I’m pretty sure these ones shouldn’t be there:
- account-plugin-facebook (-flickr, -google)
- cheese, cheese-common
- evolution-data-server (-common, -online-accounts)
- a bunch of fonts that are probably installed on the standard Ubuntu but not derivatives
- gnome-menu, gnome-session-bin (there are also other gnome-* packages but they could be apps chosen by the Mate team)
- nautilus, nautilus-data, nautilus-sendto
- ubuntu-core-launcher (for snappy apps − not sure it’s supposed to be part of variants)
- unity-asset-pool (don’t think it’s supposed to be on variants)
- unity-control-center-faces (part of the Unity Control Center so probably shouldn’t be there)
- unity-settings-daemon
That’s for the ones that seem suspicious to me but there might be others in the list (especially in the long list of libs).