I’m trying to uninstall Kwrite, because I prefer Kate as a text editor.
Anyway, it has some dependencies that the package manager also want to uninstall, namely “patterns-openSUSE-kde4” “patterns-openSUSE-kde4_basis” “patterns-openSUSE-kde4_imaging”; as far as I can tell, these are metapackages, so removing them won’t cause any modification in my system, am I right?
I’m also interested to know if, when updating the system, these “pattern” packages are somewhat required or not. I’m coming from Kubuntu, where the metapackages were only used as an easy way to install multiple related packages, and could be removed afterwards; here on openSUSE do they have a similar functionality? Or are they required not just for installation but also for update?
AFAIK, they are both more-or-less frontends to the same underlying KDE wordprocessor engine, kate having more advanced features. You can always specify kate as the default for opening text files.
Kwrite is just a simpler (than Kate) GUI frontend to the same editor component (libktexteditor), so why do you want to uninstall it?
It only takes about 100KiB of disk space anyway…
Anyway, it has some dependencies that the package manager also want to uninstall, namely “patterns-openSUSE-kde4” “patterns-openSUSE-kde4_basis” “patterns-openSUSE-kde4_imaging”; as far as I can tell, these are metapackages, so removing them won’t cause any modification in my system, am I right?
Yes.
I’m also interested to know if, when updating the system, these “pattern” packages are somewhat required or not. I’m coming from Kubuntu, where the metapackages were only used as an easy way to install multiple related packages, and could be removed afterwards; here on openSUSE do they have a similar functionality? Or are they required not just for installation but also for update?
Yes, they have a similar functionality, and no, they are not required any more.
They just take care that the default applications get installed, so to say.
They are empty packages that require/recommend other packages, so that you don’t have to install them one-by-one.
Removing a pattern does not remove the packages that got installed by it.
AFAIK patterns are not changed for a released product.
It might have an effect when you upgrade to a newer openSUSE release, yes.
But such changes/additions should also be done via recommendations/requirements/conflicts of standard packages, if they matter.
