apt-get removal frenzie

[Oege Dijk <ooch@oege@euronet.nl>]

Hi, 

I just installed alsa the other day, and like to get esound to work with it. But when I give the command

#apt-get install esound-alsa
Reading Package Lists... 100%
Building Dependency Tree... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
  asclock-themes atlas2 gperiodic libbonobo2 libesd0 libgal4 libgconf11
  libgdk-pixbuf2 libglade0 liboaf0 libterm-readkey-perl libunicode0 libzvt2 oaf
  octave octave2.0 pdl perl-5.6 r-base rasmol scrollkeeper task-science tcl8.0
  tk8.0 yorick zlib-bin 
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  balsa bug-buddy codecommander dia eeyes eog gaim-gnome gdm glade-gnome gmc
  gnapster gnome-admin gnome-applets gnome-bin gnome-card-games
  gnome-control-center gnome-core gnome-games gnome-gataxx gnome-glines
  gnome-gnibbles gnome-gnobots2 gnome-gnometris gnome-gnomine gnome-gnotravex
  gnome-gtali gnome-gturing gnome-gv gnome-help gnome-iagno gnome-iconedit
  gnome-mahjongg gnome-media gnome-network gnome-panel gnome-panel-data
  gnome-pim gnome-pim-conduits gnome-same-gnome gnome-session gnome-stones
  gnome-terminal gnome-utils gnome-xbill gnomeicu gnosamba gnotepad+ gnucash
  gnumeric grdb gtop guitar helix-sweetpill libcapplet0 libesd-alsa0
  libgdk-pixbuf-gnome2 libglade-gnome0 libgnomeui32 libobgnome0 memprof pan
  rep-gtk-gnome sawfish sawfish-gnome task-helix-core xchat-gnome 
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  asclock-themes atlas2 esound-alsa gperiodic libbonobo2 libesd0 libgal4
  libgconf11 liboaf0 libterm-readkey-perl libunicode0 oaf octave2.0 pdl
  perl-5.6 r-base rasmol scrollkeeper tcl8.0 tk8.0 yorick zlib-bin 
5 packages upgraded, 22 newly installed, 66 to remove and 185  not upgraded.
Need to get 14.4MB/14.5MB of archives. After unpacking 44.6MB will be freed.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] 

apt-get wants to remove almost my entire gnome-installation. If I am correct all packages which are to be removed share the fact that they rely in someway on esound. But I am installing esound, so why should they be removed?  According to dpkg --get-selections those packages which are to be removed are not selected for deinstallation. When I pass the option --no-remove to apt-get it just exits, without installing the rest of the sofware. I am kind of new to this whole linux/debian thing, so I don't have a clue in which direction to search for an answer. All help very much appreciated.

TIA

Oege
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