Hi Greg.

> I use apt-get  and dselect for package management..one reason aptitude
> wanted to remove packages I did not want removed..sound kind of like your
> situation.

Yesterday I used aptitude in a virtual machine and have to reinstall gimp and 
freecad

> If you do not mind trying apt-get and seeing if it behaves more to you
> wants. I never figured out why apt-get & aptitude differ in this regard.

Today on a real machine I used apt-get and only g++ (plus its dependencies) 
have been installed, nothing to reinstall.

Thanks for the hint.

Rolf