Comment 14 for bug 56742

I created a VMware image so I could repro this ... good thing I took notes while installing that machine (-:

I believe a minimal repro scenario for this would be to set up a plain server install, then install anacron, which pulls in postfix and other useful packages, and then install language-pack-en on top of that, and see those useful packages be removed if you use --without-recommends

Here's what the requested commands do:

vnix$ sudo apt-get install --install-recommends language-pack-en
E: Command line option --install-recommends is not understood

Speculating that this might be what Michael wanted (aptitude instad of apt-get, --with-recommends instead of --install-recommends):

vnix$ sudo aptitude install --with-recommends language-pack-en
<... reading package lists etc ...>
The following NEW packages will be automatically installed:
  aspell aspell-en language-pack-en-base language-support-en libaspell15
  mozilla-firefox-locale-en-gb myspell-en-gb myspell-en-us
  openoffice.org-help-en-us openoffice.org-l10n-common
  openoffice.org-l10n-en-gb openoffice.org-l10n-en-us
  openoffice.org-l10n-en-za openoffice.org-thesaurus-en-us
  thunderbird-locale-en-gb wbritish
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  <.. the same as above, plus language-pack-en ...>
0 packages upgraded, 17 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 22.5MB of archives. After unpacking 74.4MB will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n/?] n
Abort.

vnix$ sudo aptitude install -vv --show-deps --without-recommends language-pack-en
<... reading package lists etc ...>
The following packages are unused and will be REMOVED:
  libjpeg-progs miscfiles openssl (D: ssl-cert) postfix resolvconf
  ssl-cert (D: postfix) wamerican xli
The following NEW packages will be automatically installed:
  language-pack-en-base (D: language-pack-en, R: language-pack-en)
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  language-pack-en language-pack-en-base
The following packages are RECOMMENDED but will NOT be installed:
  language-support-en (R: language-pack-en-base)
0 packages upgraded, 2 newly installed, 8 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 1385kB of archives. After unpacking 3355kB will be freed.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n/?] n
Abort.

Sorry for any typos, I stupidly didn't set up VMware in a way that would have made it convenient to copy/paste stuff.

Some packages such as wamerican were pulled in earlier by other dependencies but are not central to understanding what's going on here, I believe.