Remove components from standard installation of KDE Plasma on Debian 10

Question

I recently Installed Debian 10 with KDE Plasma desktop environment. I chose this desktop environment because it is modern and looks great. The customization is also over the top making it the best flavor out there for me.

I noticed that it comes with a lot of bloatware which I can't seem to uninstall. The reason for this is that removing those packages will also remove other important packages.

I will put a list here with all the packages I am willing to remove, and what other packages will automatically be removed with them.

• Okular(document viewer) - kde-standard, task-kde-desktop
• Gwenview(image viewer) - kde-standard, task-kde-desktop
• Kaddressbook - kde-standard, task-kde-desktop
• Akregator(feed reader) - kde-standard, task-kde-desktop
• Kopete(messenger) - kde-standard, task-kde-desktop
• kmail - kde-standard, task-kde-desktop
• konqueror - kde-baseapps kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard konq-plugins task-kde-desktop
• juk(music player) - kde-standard, task-kde-desktop
• Dragon player(video player) - kde-standard, task-kde-desktop

The list goes on like this. I do not want to write all of them down, you probably get the idea.

If possible I want to remove all programs, but of course keep using KDE. Is there a way to remove these programs safely? And if not, is there a way to hide them from my program menu? I do not need any of them and it is bothering me a lot that they are there.

Solution

Installing the kde-standard package is not what you would like to install in the first place as a user who wants to have fine-grained control over the packages on your system. Given the large list of things that you do not want, I would recommend removing kde-standard and installing plasma-kde-desktop. The latter is like a minimal KDE.

However, we can also tell the package manager that we installed all of the kde-standard dependencies and recommendations manually and not as a dependency. For this high-level task, it is always more comfortable to use aptitude as your interface to the package manager (apt-get install aptitude - https://wiki.debian.org/Aptitude ). Then the magic is done with:

aptitude  unmarkauto "?reverse-depends(kde-standard) | ?reverse-recommends(kde-standard) 

Note: Before running such commands, I always recommend running aptitude in a first dry-run pass with the -s flag; that simulates the actions to be performed.

After this, you can remove the kde-standard package (aptitude remove kde-standard), and then proceed to removing the undesired packages. Depending on the way you installed KDE, aptitude may also recommend removing the task-kde-desktop, which can be safely acknowledged.

Comments

[Alessio]

install the individual kde packages you want and don't use the metapackages - their entire reason for existing is to pull in lots of other packages. they're for the convenience for those who don't want to have to individually select packages.

[Alessio]

since you've already installed the meta-packages, you'll need to use apt-mark to flag the packages you want as being manually installed apt-mark manual pkg1 pkg2 pkg2 ..... This will prevent them from being uninstalled when the meta-packaged is removed.

[mike]

@cas I do not seem to get this to work. After running sudo apt-mark manual kde-plasma-desktop it just tells me kde-plasma-desktop was already set to manually installed. Nothing changed executing this command and sudo apt-get remove konqueror still has the same result.

[Alessio]

you misunderstood me. mark the packages you want to keep installed as manual, not the meta-packages. i.e. the kde app packages listed in the Depends: line of kde-baseapps and/or task-kde-desktop etc that you want to keep. then kde-baseapps can be removed without causing anything you want to be flagged for removal. the meta-packages install everything. you don't want some of that, so you'll have to remove the meta packages and manually install the ones you want (or mark them as manual if already installed).

[Alessio]

or, far easier, just don't bother. disk space is not at a premium these days, the programs don't do anything if you don't run them (or cause another program like a file-manager to execute them), they just waste a little disk space. i.e. little or no harm, and probably not worth the bother of doing anything about.

[Christian Herenz]

Since he kde-standard is installed, this will lead to the same problem.