Is it normal for aptitude to automatically remove packages during an installation?

Question

Usually I install via apt-get or Software Center. For secure delete tools, I installed using aptitude.

sudo aptitude install secure-delete

aptitude however, removed a whole bunch of packages.

The following packages will be REMOVED:

Removing libasound2-plugins:i386 ...
Removing libasound2:i386 ...
Removing libpulse0:i386 ...
Removing libasyncns0:i386 ...
Removing nspluginwrapper ...
Removing nspluginviewer:i386 ...
Removing libgtk2.0-0:i386 ...
Removing libatk1.0-0:i386 ...
Removing libpango1.0-0:i386 ...
Removing libcairo2:i386 ...
Removing libthai0:i386 ...
Removing libdatrie1:i386 ...
Removing libsndfile1:i386 ...
Removing libflac8:i386 ...
Removing libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0:i386 ...
Removing libjack-jackd2-0:i386 ...
Removing libjasper1:i386 ...
Removing libjson0:i386 ...
Removing libnspr4-0d:i386 ...
Removing libnss3-1d:i386 ...
Removing libvorbisenc2:i386 ...
Removing libvorbis0a:i386 ...
Removing libogg0:i386 ...
Removing libpixman-1-0:i386 ...
Removing libsamplerate0:i386 ...
Removing libspeexdsp1:i386 ...
Removing libwrap0:i386 ...
Removing libxcb-render0:i386 ...
Removing libxcb-shm0:i386 ...
Removing libxcomposite1:i386 ...
Removing libxcursor1:i386 ...
Removing libxft2:i386 ...
Removing libxinerama1:i386 ...
Removing libxrandr2:i386 ...

But I did not put in a command for removing packages.

Is this normal? Could I have lost dependences from this, or does aptitude check whether these packages are not depended on.

How can I check if any of the software on my computer has missing dependencies?

Answer 1

aptitude, always remove the packages that were automatically installed in the past as dependencies, and that are not required anymore. It does not provide an explicit autoremove command.

apt-get remove such packages only on an explicit user request, with the command

sudo apt-get autoremove

or when the flag --auto-remove is provided for other commands, for example

sudo apt-get --auto-remove dist-upgrade

Both utilities do not broke any dependency.