I have asked a similar question a couple of years ago, but it wasn't related to a system upgrade and more focused on potentially malicious software or licensing issues.
Since I am considering regularly upgrading to minor, non-LTS Releases, I was wondering what happens to installed programs that have no supported package in the Release repository anymore with a do-release-upgrade or apt dist-upgrade.
As an example, Amarok currently has no package in any repository after 18.04, since Qt4-based software had been removed lately. What would have happened to my Amarok installation, if I had installed it on 18.04 LTS and upgraded to 18.10?
Would it have been removed from my system on upgrade? Or would it stay on the last package version until a new package was available?
My previous question suggests that it would likely stay in the last supported version on my system, but I believe to have read that some software was removed on a system upgrade.
do-release-upgrade.dist-upgradeis unrelated to upgrading from one release to another`. – Pilot6 Dec 29 '19 at 13:44dist-upgradeas a way to upgrade releases. – Prototype700 Dec 29 '19 at 14:09dist-upgradewill remove packages if the dependencies change, but thesources.listfile still needs to be manually updated, whereas withdo-release-upgradethat's not the case? How else would there be any changes besides the ones in the release repository? – Prototype700 Dec 29 '19 at 14:46dist-upgradedoesn't upgrade to a new release, that's you need to understand. It is deprecated now and replaced byfull-upgradeprobably not to confuse people ;-) – Pilot6 Dec 29 '19 at 14:48apt install amarokconstitute as beingapt-mark:auto? Meaning that even when Ido-release-upgradeit won't be removed although the package is no longer available? – Prototype700 Dec 29 '19 at 19:25