Lubuntu - recent update problems related to xserver hwe-16.04

[Joachim Schimpf]

Lubuntu 16.04 LTS - About two weeks ago the software updater started reporting problems, seemingly related to xserver.

Tried to manually upgrade xserver-xorg-core-hwe-16.04, but cancelled because it wants to remove lots of packages including lubuntu-core.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 16.04
Package: ubuntu-release-upgrader-core 1:16.04.21 [origin: unknown]
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.10.0-37.41~16.04.1-generic 4.10.17
Uname: Linux 4.10.0-37-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.1-0ubuntu2.10
Architecture: amd64
CrashDB: ubuntu
CurrentDesktop: LXDE
Date: Sun Oct 22 18:28:49 2017
InstallationDate: Installed on 2017-04-04 (201 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Lubuntu 16.04.2 LTS "Xenial Xerus" - Release amd64 (20170215)
PackageArchitecture: all
SourcePackage: ubuntu-release-upgrader
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
VarLogDistupgradeTermlog:

[Joachim Schimpf (ch59im)]

It seems there is a dependency conflict which makes it impossible to have

    lubuntu-desktop

installed together with

    xserver-xorg-core-hwe-16.04

To avoid the problem, I downgraded and (re)installed the non-hwe xserver:

    sudo apt install xserver-xorg-core

This removed xserver-xorg-core-hwe-16.04 (as intended), but also lubuntu-desktop
and a few other things (as a side effect). I then reinstalled these lost packages:

    sudo apt install xorg lubuntu-desktop

[Caution: after the first step (and reboot) the console was nonresponsive, so the second step had do be done from an ssh login.]

I now have a clean system again, but the fact remains that lubuntu-desktop (or one of its dependencies) and xserver-xorg-core-hwe-16.04 seem to be in conflict.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.