how to install xfce and lxde?

Hello.

I have opensuse 13.1 with kde on my laptop and would like to try xfce and lxde to compare energy consumption between them. What would be the command or can perform a standard installation of these two desktops?

Thank you.

Yast > Software > Software Management. Then left from the View button, choose Patterns. Scroll down to Desktop Environments and check the ones you want for installation. Lower right: Accept.

then if you want to delete this environment. Is it sufficient uncheck the box in overall patterns to remove all references to that environment?

Nope. But why would you want to remove them? What you do not like, you do not use. Disk space cant not be a problem in most cases.

As hcvv mentioned, “uninstalling” (or deselecting) a pattern won’t remove any packages.

But you can select the pattern in YaST and then right-click on the package list and select “All in this list”->Delete (or in the “Package” menu) in the Qt version of YaST, or “Select All” and then right click again and choose “Remove” in the Gtk version.

I am not sure that that is a good idea. The Pattern is a list of packages that should be installed for a purpose. But, when installing those, it does of course not install what is already installed. When you then later try to deinstall alll packagges from the Pattern list, that will also involve packages that were already there and that you may need for other reasons.

Example.
I see Firefox being part of the LCDE pattern and also of the XFCE pattern and of the KDE4 base system pattern. Now what when you deinstall all the packages in the LCDE pattern list?

And Firefox is just an obvious one because the user (may) depend on it. But what about packages that are dependencies for other packages that will remain? (At least you will get a warning about the latter category).

You’re right of course, I didn’t think of that.

So you should better select the packages to uninstall manually in the list.
Or look through the list (or the Installation Summary) to de-select the ones you don’t want to uninstall.

But at least it should be of help to know which packages are part of the pattern.