I also experienced the DistUpgradeViewGtk problem and solved it by installing python-vte. I was only able to figure this out because I debug Python code at work.
I'd think python-vte should be made a dependency of update-manager - that would solve this problem straightforwardly unless people ever download & run dist-upgrade.py directly!
The update is now in progress, but I'm sure that any system hangs reported are a separate bug to the - quite simple to fix - python-vte bug.
Hope this helps some - figured I'd report this so that other updaters to edgy will not have this problem.
I also experienced the DistUpgradeViewGtk problem and solved it by installing python-vte. I was only able to figure this out because I debug Python code at work.
I'd think python-vte should be made a dependency of update-manager - that would solve this problem straightforwardly unless people ever download & run dist-upgrade.py directly!
The update is now in progress, but I'm sure that any system hangs reported are a separate bug to the - quite simple to fix - python-vte bug.
Hope this helps some - figured I'd report this so that other updaters to edgy will not have this problem.