xubuntu-desktop conflicted with ubuntu-desktop in natty

This technically shouldn't have been possible before, but notify-osd didn't have the proper Conflicts in maverick.

Would it be possible for the metapackages to Depend on notification-daemon and then Recommend the proper one for the Desktop in question?

Probably doesn't qualify as high since most people probably don't install more than one desktop.

The -desktop packages are meta-packages which pull in the applications and packages needed for that environment. If both Ubuntu-desktop and and other -desktop package are installed at the same time, when you upgrade to the next release, the upgrade will fail and you will be facing difficulties of a partial upgrade to the next release.

To provide some help with trying to resolve, please refer to bug 571743 , system upgrade 9.10 --> 10.04 could not calculate upgrade when both xubuntu-desktop and ubuntu-desktop are installed .

The metapackages never depend on virtual packages since the entire point of the metapackages is to select particular choices. I'm not sure that we've ever guaranteed that different metapackages will be coinstallable.

The only way to "fix" the issue when installing both meta packages at the same time would be to move one of the depends to a recommends. Though that'd only work if one of the desktop can work properly with the notification daemon of the other.

So if xubuntu can work without xfce4-notifyd and use notify-osd instead, moving xfce4-notifyd to recommends instead of depends would do the trick.

Otherwise, I think the best, if possible would be to prompt the user on upgrade telling them that the upgrade can't continue because they have two different desktops installed at once and ask them to choose which to keep. I don't know how easy it's to do that in the upgrader tool, mvo would probably know.

Of course, that upgrade step should only apply when we have two -desktop packages that can't be installed at the same time. It's normal for edubuntu-desktop and ubuntu-desktop to be installed at the same time (as edubuntu-desktop depends on ubuntu-desktop).

actualy one need they corresponding notify
this for the configuration in case of xubuntu the look-and feel, i cannot try both desktop fot the reason of a low internet

I assume that this issue has been fixed at some point, because it is possible to have both meta-packages installed side by side in later Ubuntu releases.

oneiric has seen the end of its life and is no longer receiving any updates. Marking the oneiric task for this ticket as "Won't Fix".