1. obsolete utilities package miscutils is an obsolete package and may be removed safely. miscutils was replaced by the following packages: getty, login, util-linux, update, fdutils, debianutils, passwd. Since fdutils is not required, it must be installed separately. After this version miscutils is installed, it is safe and desirable to purge miscutils. If miscutils is purged while it still has conffiles, then important conffiles may be lost. From Debian 3.0r0 APT