I found KDE very buggy and bloated, so I switched to XFCE. Is it possible (or even advisable) to remove KDE if I’m not going to use it? If so, how? Would it break anything? I tried to simply uncheck it in YaST > Patterns but was not able to.
Thanks!
Not advisable there may be common dependencies.
You can not install KDE at the OS install removing gets messy.
Sorry, what you were not able to do? You mean check buttons magically checked themselves back or what?
A Pattern is just a list of packages that is being checked for installation. Most people then simply say Continue and those packages will be installed if they weren’t already. Just a convenience so that you do not have to follow some list and check all those packages one by one.
When all packages suggested in the Pattern are installed (most certain in your case) unchecking the Pattern will at the most uncheck those packages for installation. But they are already installed, so that leads to nothing.
You may think that then checking all those packages for de-installation might be a helpful feature, but it is not. It will then also de-install packages that might be needed by other Patterns or for another reason. I can e.g. imagine that Firefox is in the KDE Pattern. But it will also be in the Gnome Pattern. So mindless de-installing it might not what you want.
As said above. Take the decision at system installation. Else let it where it is. Some disk space spoiled, but that is it.
Which is hardly a feature. If you look more closely, most packages that are required/recommended by KDE patterns appear to be installed by user request. Which is actually plain wrong. If those packages were marked as autoinstalled, then zypper rm --clean-deps ... for KDE patterns would also remove them.
Personally I think it is a bug, most likely in installer (because installing patterns on a running system does not exhibit this behavior). At the very least one expects consistent behavior whether the same pattern is installed as part of initial installation or later.
Only the KDE Plasma Desktop or, also, the KDE applications – Okular, Dolphin, etc., etc. ?
- In YaST → Software Manager → Patterns:
“Graphical Environments” →
“KDE Plasma 5 Desktop Base”
“KDE Applications and Plasma 5 Desktop”
Also, the Pattern:
- KDE Desktop →
“KDE PIM Suite”
If you want to remove “everything KDE” then, remove everything in those three sections and, possibly, blacklist any KDE applications which re-install due to other dependencies.
If you’ve installed “kdevelop5”, you’ll have to removed that as well.
Dependencies:
When you remove the packages listed in each KDE Patterns section, you’ll have to resolve more than dependencies issues – carefully.
- Be aware that, XFCE uses GTK (KDE uses Qt) and therefore, there shouldn’t be too many packages pulled in by the KDE installation due to dependencies and, due to XFCE dependencies, also needed by XFCE.
The dependencies questions posed by YaST when you deinstall the KDE packages should resolve any dependency issues but, “nobody is perfect” …
When you’ve completed removing all the KDE Plasma packages from the system, you’ll have to execute the following, to check for anything you’ve overseen – before rebooting the system:
# zypper verify
# rpm --rebuilddb
# rpm --verify --all
Seems to me if you’re not picky about having every last bit of Plasma removed, all that should be needed is sudo zypper rm libkf5* kf5* plasma* sddm. Include -D switch to test what would happen. Were something to do with XFCE to be removed, reinstalling the XFCE pattern should fix it. Whenever I’ve removed plasma in the past, that’s essentially what I did, but I never had XFCE installed in anything other than Mint.
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I would keep KDE Plasma on your system as a back-up if I were you. I use KDE on my system and have iceWM also available. A couple of times, over the years, fiddling with KDE I have broke KDE and been able to login using iceWM to fix it. Mind you I use ext4 (rather than Btrfs), so am not able to roll back.
This seem to be the way to go, I agree with mrmazda. Lightdm will be the replacement of SDDM. If you try to reinstall SDDM branding-opensuse it will reinstall the plasma desktop. SDDM can be installed using the upstream-branding.
I am an xfce user and when I install opensuse I always go for xfce. If I want to have a KDE flavor I just install kwin, plasma stuffs and plasma session.
I have some screenshots here of removing my KDE install that in my opinion was the safest I did. There are remnants that will not be removed because I am using some kde applications.
Why?
XFCE is GTK based – in other words GNOME – therefore, it makes sense to use GNOME (GTK) applications.
KDE Plasma is Qt based – therefore, it makes sense to use KDE (Qt) applications –
- Plus a couple of GTK based applications such as Firefox with, the appropriate GTK libraries additionally installed …
Please be aware that, Xfce lists the following as suitable Display Managers:
- LightDM
- LXDM
- SLiM (to avoid any GNOME or KDE dependencies … )
- GDM
- KDM
Reference here: <https://docs.xfce.org/xfce/display_managers>
But, it seems that, GDM could, possibly, be a preferred Display Manager for Xfce: <https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Xfce#User_switching_action_button_is_greyed_out>
LightDM is the one for Xfce, in fact even though the tumbleweed fresh install is using SDDM, lightDM is present in the xfce4 settings manager.
Yes. You can. It won’t break anything. Try this:
erlangen:~ # zypper --non-interactive remove --dry-run --clean-deps --type pattern kde
Reading installed packages...
Resolving package dependencies...
The following 30 packages are going to be REMOVED:
ark ark-lang gwenview5 gwenview5-lang kate kate-lang kate-plugins kcalc kcalc-lang kipi-plugins kipi-plugins-lang libKF5JSApi5 libKF5Kipi32_0_0 libKF5MediaWiki5 libcfitsio10 libdjvulibre21 libgnustep-base1_29 libkColorPicker0
libkImageAnnotator0 libkerfuffle23 libkipi-data libobjc4 okular okular-lang patterns-kde-kde skanlite skanlite-lang spectacle spectacle-lang unar
The following pattern is going to be REMOVED:
kde
30 packages to remove.
After the operation, 107.0 MiB will be freed.
Continue? [y/n/v/...? shows all options] (y): y
erlangen:~ #
More patterns are lurking:
erlangen:~ # zypper se --type pattern -is kde
Loading repository data...
Reading installed packages...
S | Name | Type | Version | Arch | Repository
---+------------+---------+--------------+--------+-----------------------
i+ | kde | pattern | 20230403-1.1 | noarch | Haupt-Repository (OSS)
i | kde_pim | pattern | 20230403-1.1 | noarch | Haupt-Repository (OSS)
i | kde_plasma | pattern | 20230403-1.1 | noarch | Haupt-Repository (OSS)
erlangen:~ #
Removal in the above patterns may result in unneeded packages. Remove them too: Cleanup of distribution upgrades
KDE is neither buggy nor bloated, in my opinion of course. You may try and revise your opinion.
A couple of KDE related packages which you will also have to remove in addition to those packages in the YaST KDE patterns:
- Almost everything which YaST finds when you search for “qt”.
- Everything which YaST finds when you search for “akonadi”.
- Everything which YaST finds when you search for “KF5” in addition to the search suggested by mrmazda.
When you’ve removed everything in the KDE patterns sections, also search for “baloo” and then, remove those packages as well.
BTW:
erlangen:~ # zypper --non-interactive remove --dry-run --clean-deps --type pattern kde_pim
Reading installed packages...
Resolving package dependencies...
The following 76 packages are going to be REMOVED:
akonadi-calendar-tools akonadi-calendar-tools-lang akonadi-import-wizard akonadi-import-wizard-lang akonadi-plugin-calendar akonadi-plugin-contacts akonadi-plugin-mime akonadi-search akonadi-search-lang akregator akregator-lang
eventviews incidenceeditor kaddressbook kaddressbook-doc kaddressbook-lang kalendarac kdav kdav-lang kdepim-addons kdepim-addons-lang kdepim-runtime kdepim-runtime-lang kleopatra kleopatra-lang kmail kmail-account-wizard
kmail-account-wizard-lang kmail-application-icons kmail-lang knotes knotes-lang kontact kontact-lang korganizer korganizer-lang kross kross-lang ktnef libKF5DAV5 libKF5TextGrammarCheck1 libKGantt2 libKPim5AddressbookImportExport5
libKPim5EventViews5 libKPim5EventViews5-lang libKPim5GAPICalendar5 libKPim5GAPIPeople5 libKPim5GAPITasks5 libKPim5ImportWizard5 libKPim5IncidenceEditor5 libKPim5IncidenceEditor5-lang libKPim5KontactInterface5
libKPim5KontactInterface5-lang libKPim5MailCommon5 libKPim5MailImporter5 libKPim5MailImporterAkonadi5 libKPim5Tnef5 libKPim5Tnef5-lang libQt5Script5 libkgantt-lang libkolabxml1 libksieve libksieve-lang libksieve5 mailcommon
mailcommon-lang mailimporter mailimporter-lang mbox-importer mbox-importer-lang paperkey patterns-kde-kde_pim pim-data-exporter pim-data-exporter-lang pim-sieve-editor pim-sieve-editor-lang
The following pattern is going to be REMOVED:
kde_pim
76 packages to remove.
After the operation, 122.4 MiB will be freed.
Continue? [y/n/v/...? shows all options] (y): y
erlangen:~ #
My experience is that I find KDE to be very stable and with no bloat because I don’t install software I don’t use. I looked at Tumbleweed + KDE but remained with Kubuntu because KDE is more native. Purging plasma-desktop would remove KDE entirely, leaving only the Ubuntu base. SUSE apparently uses a different type of merge.
Hi, and welcome to the openSUSE Forums.
Nice to see that, your view of KDE is more or less the same as my view of the KDE Applications and GUI.
- The only exceptions I use in place of the equivalent KDE offerings are:
– Firefox
– LibreOffice
And, the KDE Killer Application is (IMNSHO):
- digiKam …
Has anyone noticed that, the OP hasn’t replied to any of our suggestions? 
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Yes, I have already days ago.
I wondered how many well meaning people here would carry on giving advice to someone that seems to be gone long ago 
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