have here an older TW KDE with no frills. Wanted to remove Wacom tablet trash, as I did in the past without problems. Went to YaST Software and chose all installed with wacom, including xf86-input-wacom and hit Enter.
Then the packages were removed apparently I Iwas thrown to IceWM login screen (no KDE in menu to choose, as expected) without touchpad and without wifi to re-install the packages to get my KDE back.
How to get KDE up and running again and my wifi back? (no RJ45 at this machine, all USB-RJ45 some 1200 km away…)
One should stop pushing buttons and rethink their actions, when the package resolver wants to remove over 600 packages. Because this is what happens when you try to remove libwacom-data and/or libwacom9. That are basic packages which are tightly connected to the KDE Plasma desktop. Also YaST Software has the tab called “Installation summary” which shows you all the actions which will be done prior hitting the button “Apply” even when one ignored the message that 600 packages will get deleted.
What to do now:
You may want to get an USB Stick with a TW ISO and try to use the update menu (not installation menu!) from it. You need to choose the Plasma pattern if possible (not sure if you get the DE chooser when performing an update instead of installation). You need to use the latest ISO to have the latest set of packages.
Thanks for reply, I added a USB-stick for wifi and systemctl restart NetworkManager brought me back online. Re-installed wacom trah, but still no touchpad and no KDE to choose at login-screen.
Will try Plasma pattern next.
Why is KDE hard dependent on shady trash like “Wacom tablet finder” to start with?
It is only “shady trash” in your opinion which is limited to your personal usecase. Wacom tablets are widely spread and commonly used. As KDE Plasma is also provided and developed for these types of graphival pen displays/tablets, it is logic that Plasma provides input/output methods and tools for it.
If one is so picky and is annoyed by 9 packages (this is the amount of available wacom packages), one can carefully have a look. 7 of them can be safely removed without removing complete Plasma. The basic libraries which are tightly connected to Plasma (libwacom-data and libwacom9), cannot be removed. And btw, not all of these 9 packages are installed by default.
KDE Plasma is a full blown DE for many use cases, devices and more. If you want a small, limited and sparse DE, use another one.
Hi @suse_rasputin, two issues here. One, the name. A bunch of libs have “wacom” in the name but actually support any pen tablet or pen display. My understanding is that several were never associated with Wacom the company.
Eg libwacom9 provides information about just about any tablet input device. So despite the name it’s not tied to Wacom, nor is it “wacom trash”. It was always a FOSS project, part of a bigger drive to improve input methods. I guess fifteen years ago the name made more sense. Perhaps it should be renamed to libpentabletsandpendisplaydescriptors. Perhaps that could be shortened.
Second issue, integration. Do you want users to have a good time when they connect their XP-PEN, Huion or Wacom tablet - the capabilities of tablets and pen displays vary widely, and how applications should respond to pen input also varies. Can you partition that off from all the other GUI libs, make it fully pluggable across most applications, and still have tight integration when the user expects a pen-first experience? It’s like making mouse support fully uninstallable without impacting applications. Come to think of it, is that possible?
A fairly basic XFCE install also pulls in libwacom9 and removing it will uninstall a bunch of libs and applications. Maybe it was easier to remove it in the past because fewer applications had pen specific code.
