Comment 1 for bug 1851346

Unfortunately, this isn't a problem within the metas.

However, it does appear to be a problem with the plugin inside Ubiquity. The mechanism is that the metapackages call the packages within the meta as dependencies. However, if one of those packages is marked for uninstallation (essentially what Ubiquity does in this case), then it marks the metapackage the package is pulled-in from for uninstallation as well. This then flags the apt system that all of those packages (which are considered dependencies of the meta) are "no longer needed". Then, when Ubiquity calls an "apt autoremove" at the end of installation, it removes those packages that have been deemed as "no longer needed".

This is a change from the intended behavior which had previously worked. I'm not sure when the change occurred, but there definitely needs to be a fix in place before 20.04. I will add this bug to the 19.10 release notes.