Issue with the system update

Hi All,

I am still learning so I guess mine will be a silly question. :shame:
I installed Xfce as my DE however I didn’t like the selection of software available so I deleted the default ones and I installed the ones I wanted. Then I would like to perform a system update through zypper but it tried to install all the software I deleted. Now I am wondering if it may depend by the meta-package that in OS is called patterns, what do you think? It is safe to remove the pattern meta-package I don’t need or is it going to remove all the packages associated with it?

Thanks in advance,

Daniel

There is somewhere an option: do not install recommended.
There is also the possibility to ban individual packages from installation.

When I use them, I do this from YaST > Software Management, but you can of course also use zypper.

man zypper

BTW, I can understand that you want extra software, but putting a lot of effort into removing and banning from installation software that does no more then using some disk space … ?

Hi,

if “don’t install recommends” works like in Debian I don’t believe this is my issue. My question was more about because the system wants

Regarding your final question the answer is simply, I don’t like having unused applications on my linux box, I don’t need to have 10 multimedia player or 10 text editor, I prefer having a clean menu with lesser voices and if it can also helps to avoid to have too many runtimes running at the same time, then even better.

Your idea about the patterns packages is correct. If you remove individual packages that are requirements for some pattern, these will be reinstalled to not break the pattern. To avoid that, remove the pattern package that requires them.

well yes patterns install applications you might not want or use but are part of said pattern and get installed as part of the pattern
there’s also an option in yast->software management to disable recommended packages this can also be changed by editing /etc/zypp/zypper.conf
personally I avoid using patterns and I have disabled recommended packages in yast and have a rather clean plasma 5 desktop although I’m currently testing a few new applications