Hello. After installing the OS there are many unused packages, some of them are from medieval ages (wordview, JOE, modem or CD-ROM stuff that I don’t have more than 7 years etc.) Sometimes I install new packages with more than 5 dependencies and they are not uninstalled together or I forgot about them.
So, can I safely uninstal packages that are unused (almost) forever (for example, packages that were never used by anyone another package more than 3 month)?
When you are not short of diskspace, just leave them. It is not worth the trouble IMHO.
You could, when upgrading to a next openSUSE version, install fresh instead of dong one of the upgrade actions (but of course keeping your user data in e.g. /home). That will give you a fresh start once in a while.
hm, it’s not something like perfectionism (gentoo’s) way. Or what about thin configuration? Or if someone from new useless programs will autostart or add some demons that will slow/crash system later?
When you, as the system manager, are fond of having a system as clean as possible, you should make notes, when you install packages for a try, about what dependencies are drawn in. That is the most sure way to know what to de-install after the trial. And even then, installing other packages between those instal and l de-install actions, may need some of those packages as dependencies, so be prepared for warnings.
And there is no time registration about how long files of a certain package are not “used” (whatever the definition of “used” is in this case).
When you are afraid that your system runs daemons that it shouldn’t, you can see in YaST > System > Services Manager what is enabled and disable at will.
Why bother. They take up very little disk space.
However …
You can try Yast Software Management. Select the “Package Groups” view. Then click on the line for “Unneeded packages”. It should be safe to remove any of those.
I’ll note that a few days ago, somebody decided that he didn’t need “xterm”. So he removed it. And a whole bunch of other stuff was also removed, crippling his system. There’s a thread in this forum about that.
It is far simpler to just ignore the software that you are not using.
Yes, it was me :). And I already remove “Unneeded packages”.