removing all unnecessary packages

What is the easiest way to remove all non-essential packages?
I don’t want anything other than the necessary operating system packages,
and drivers.

Start with installing a text only system. And fr om there remove what you think you do not nneed.

What is unnecessary to you may be necessary to me. You don’t need a GUI but most want one. So there really is no one button you can press. Removing packages can be tricky since other packages may require them… But a a lot of packages are not dependencies but recommended. You can turn off recommends in Yast software management and they won’t be installed anymore. If that is on then removing a package that is recommended by another it will get dragged back in at when you get an update. You can in yast mark removed package as taboo to be sure of not reinstalling. But you really have to have a deep understanding of the system not to mess things up.

Can you start from the beginning?
What is your tolerance for working with something that “just works” vs doing something very unfamiliar and possibly with command line tools?
How do you define what is “needed?” So, for instance a “Text only System” install will still install a full complement of network troubleshooting tools, but a JeOS image should not include them. A JeOS image is supposed to be truly bare bones which “only” runs, supports the most basic I/O and has the ability to install software packages.

If you’re removing from an existing system, it’s very difficult to identify what you want to remove.
If you install a “Text only Server” system, it’s probably the easiest minimal install.
But, if you want to start from <only> the barest least, then a JeOS image can be tried, which is more commonly used by Developers and not End Users.

TSU

Thanks all.

I’m interested in getting to know the system more,
and I’m mostly comfortable with the command line.
Where can I find these “text only” and “jeos” downloads?

Ideally I was hoping for something like zypper dup --start-fresh,
which would update all system and security packages,
and remove everything else, including desktop environments.

Is there an easy way to remove all KDE / Plasma packages?

I still need Qt, but I don’t think I’m using anything KDE based.
I use openbox, xterm, atom, retext, chromium, qupzilla, qt creator and lmms.

I found View->Patterns in YaST2
however, ‘Plasma 5 Desktop’ includes things like
Firefox and pulseaudio (which seems to be running).

Text only is a choice you make during insallation on the screen where you can choose the DE you want to run on your system (and you can add other DEs later after installation). IIRC there is X-only (which gives you X, but no DE with it and text only (which will give you no X at all, and thus will start your system at run level 3 (or it’s new equivalent in systemd).

JeOS you have to search on the internet, It is a basicaly a different download.

There is no such thing. The principle is that you FIRST decide what you want to use your system for. And then what to install on installation is YOUR conclusion. No software can guess this.

E.g., when your system should be an HTTP server, you could install a text only one and add the LAMP pattern.

When you first install a lot of software you do not need, that will pull in other software you also do not need, but there is no marker added that it is something you do not need.

Again NO. Because the KDE pattern will pull in all that is guessed to be of use for the nominal KDE user (that is what the Pattern is for). And as you found below, that includes e.g. Firefox (it being the default browser in KDE). But the same could be true for the Gnome/LXDE/XFCE pattern and thus when you rremove all that the KDE pattern pulled in, you will also remove packages that other DEs would have pulled in (when installed).

It is almost impossible to remove what you installed and that you decide now that you do not need. Not the packages themselves, but the dependencies. Specially those that were logical to add when installing a pattern.

That is really not what I would call a minimal system lol!

I’m just trying to get rid of everything I’m not using,
and prevent hundreds of packages from being updated for no reason.

It seems like the path of least resistance is a fresh install.

I appreciate the help. :cool:

I am sorry to day so, but that is nonsense. The reason you get those updates is because you are running Tumbleweed. What do you expect else from a rolling release?

I run Leap and there are only a few patches in the Update repos a week. From Packman there are more because that has a different update policy. But Packman is indeed something you may skip when you are not interested in functioning Multimedia.

In other words, I doubt you made the right choice in going for Tumbleweed.