Published at LXer:

While many believed "aptitude" will soon replace "apt-get" given the fact that it's a lot "smarter", it seems that's not the case in Ubuntu - in fact it's quite the opposite: aptitude has been removed from Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat though it is still available in the repositories.

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Watches as Ubuntu moves yet further away from doing things the Debian way.

Gone as well in the default installation of Lucid Lynx are the classic GIMP image editor and the Abiword word processor. Of course, you can add them from the package manager.

Also gone is support for bluetooth, compiz extra, ekiga, gnome-pilot, gnumeric, xsane, and a host of libraries.

What will they remove next?

Quality? Oh wait, they already removed that,

Not exactly "on topic", but I've never been able to really like this particular aspect of Debian GNU/Linux and derived distributions. You have dpkg, and then you have front ends to dpkg, and then you have front ends to the front ends to dpkg. Also, depending on the distribution and the type of installation you've performed, you sometimes end up with more than two utilities which "kind of" have the same purpose, but each has advantages/disadvantages.

AFAIR the Debian documentation points to aptitude as the suggested front end, yet apt-get seems to be generally preferred/used by users and in unofficial documentation. I also think many more people have heard of apt-get. I haven't used SuSE/OpenSUSE in a long time.. but I think over there things are even more complex.

Back on topic, I don't see why Ubuntu should stick to the "Debian way" of doing things. Nor am I able to understand why people care(d) that GIMP is no longer part of the "default install".

I don't see why it matters either, after all ubuntu isn't debian, and doesn't owe anything to debian by staying the same. Infact it helps expand the gap between the two, which in someways is helpful.

For the general users who ubuntu is aimed at (people who I think of as needing access to the internet and maybe email) really aren't the same people I think of as needing access to an advanced tool for malnipulation of digital media.

I find it amusing how people in the past have moaned about windows shipping with various things such as internet explorer, yet see no problem shipping a distro with one program, but not another.
I know its not exactly the same but the idea of seperating the distrobution from the programs it supports is a very fine line in a normal users eyes. They dont want to see the underlying O/S and if the only way an O/S can distingish itself is by not automatically shipping with some of the applications a user associates with a different O/S then so be it.

P.S. I really quite hate ubuntu, so I'm not defending it because I love it or anything.