I'm trying to make a lightweight VM based on Xubuntu. I want to start with a stock Xubuntu installation and then remove any packages that I don't need.
My concept is to build a .deb package that removes the unneeded packages. I've been reasonably successful specifying that my package conflicts with the ones I want to remove. For example:
Conflicts: gnumeric, thunderbird, blueman, mousepad, xchat, etc...
This causes the named packages to be removed when my package is installed.
The problem comes later: if I want to re-install, say, Thunderbird, doing so will cause my package to be uninstalled.
What's a good way to clean up the system in an automated manner? Can the postinst script be used to remove packages?