On the contrary, few people red this bug and no discussion about whether it is
a bug or not happened yet.
Removing essential packages in gnome is not necessarily a bug. As an obvious
example, it's not a bug that # apt-get remove libgtk2.0-0; removes essential
packages in gnome.
Just imagine that I submit a bug against a file manager because, when I double click on a file, the manager deletes that file. But then you say: if you right click on the file and select "remove", the file is removed.
Is that your reasoning?
Only packages which weren't directly installed (for example, libfoo after #
apt-get install foo;) are supposed to be marked as automatically installed.
I know
Does this match the situation you described?
gdm was installed when I installed Debian. I am afraid I am unable to say anything else.