Ok, my 2 cents worth, from an new, casual user's perspective. I agree
this is a bug.

History:

I bought my first computer 3 years ago, and struggled along with Vista
for six months, until I was infested with the "conficker worm"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conficker after going on an online banking
institution, April 01.2009. I had all the newest anti-malware
applications. My installed version of Kaspersky;s went nuts reporting to
me the infection, but became unusable. All the Microsoft anti-malicious
software removal sites, for me couldn't contend with it. In desperation
I bare-boned installed Hardy ... Great I learn no real concerns about
malware in Linux and Ubuntu, if one is cautious. :^). I make a conscious
decision to remain with LTS, for being more secure and less chance of
things going "screwy" with new code.  I start to learn my way around
linux and Ubuntu slowly (new and casual user right) and inevitably break
it multiple times, winding up re-installing Hardy as last resorts, for
lack of knowing how to fix. Theses were complete new installs, a lot of
configuring. Now I keep a separate ~/ partition, that save a lot of
configuring in new installs, bringing it forward during manual installs.
(Starting to learn a bit of the "'nix way"). I learn I need a backup
solution in place the "hard way" and finally settle on Deja-dup; for
lack of better understanding ... a front-end configuration for duplicity
back-end. By this time I have learned to enable PPA's for my preferred
and often used apps and do so for "DD". I use DD as it's an Ubuntu
featured app in the Software Sources and is going to be included for the
next release. Also, the dev (Michael Terry) works for Canonical, I
believe. Seems a good choice for a newbie's backup solution. I ran into
a problem, with DD and contacted and received help for the concern, at
Launchpad. MTerry, in our conversation states:

"So, there is a theoretical concern that if duplicity changed something,
you'd want a newer Deja Dup that knew how to handle that change (which
you won't be getting from the deja-dup PPA because Lucid's version won't
be getting updated, as newer Deja Dups require more modern
dependencies). But for the current duplicity, I don't believe that is
the case. I believe 14.x can handle the latest duplicity. Also, there
are a couple bugs fixed in at least duplicity 0.6.14 that you will
really want. They potentially introduce data corruption if a backup is
interrupted. I have backported the fixes and would love if you could
test them:  So I would highly recommend you either install my backports
or use the duplicity PPA.

Backports". Well I never used backports because of this warning here:  
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuBackports 
"Backports candidates are tested by several Backports developers and community 
contributors before they are allowed to be placed in the repository. Backports 
packages are thus safer to use than the development distribution. At minimum 
the packages should be usable in a manner that the average Backports developer 
could test. However, given the nature of introducing newer versioned packages 
from a development distribution into a stable, released distribution, problems 
can arise. The most common side-effects would be a bug that escaped testing, or 
a new configuration file format (or other kind of incompatibility). If you have 
problems with a Backports package please report it in the Backports bugtracker 
and not the main Ubuntu one.

Due to the nature and purpose of Backports, it is not as "stable" as the
previously mentioned update repositories, for a variety of reasons.

    Backports are designed to provide new features. These new features may be 
unfamiliar to users and require a period of re-learning to become familiar with 
their favorite application again.
    Backports may introduce differing configuration file options or behavior 
that may catch an administrator off guard. For this reason it's not encouraged 
to upgrade backports as a part of an automated procedure on high-stability 
production environments.
    Backports are newer software by definition, and newer software tends to be 
tested by fewer people. The risk for an uncaught bug is increased. 

In assessing the "stability" of backports, it's important to define the
term stability first. In terms of "the behavior I see today is the same
as the behavior I'll see after applying a bunch of backports updates",
Backports is fairly unstable. New apps introduced via backports may have
significantly changed behavior or interfaces. In terms of "applying a
backport will completely break my system", Backports is fairly stable. A
great deal of work goes into testing backports and it's highly unlikely
for a backport to be a severe regression from the version it replaces.

The user should judge for himself if Backports are appropriate for his
purposes".

So, how does a No0b know, if enabling the Backport repos are
"appropriate for his purpose", or if he can fix it if is not. I don't!

Well great, I want security, stability and a good backup solution and I
am a (remember casual, new and I should add "older" user), and because
the version of Deja-dup included in Lucid is version 14.X and the dev
has version deja-dup-20.0.tar.bz2 out. I think I should try compiling
it; but am afraid I will wind up in "dependency-hell" and break things
again ...

So, if Canonical and Ubuntu want to court new users, I believe fixing
this bug, would make things a lot easier and potentially safer for me
and those other No0bs.

:^)

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/578045

Title:
  Upgrading packaged Ubuntu application unreasonably involves upgrading
  entire OS

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