How to keep LO "language packs" out of apt upgrade list?

[este.el.paz]

Folks:

Just for kicks I booted up my new persistent live drive of Debian Bullseye and I just wanted to "upgrade" the system, so I ran an "apt" and it showed a bunch of "LibreOffice language packs" and LO "help" in different languages . . . . These days I only speak one language, so do I need to fill my usb drive with languages . . . ??? Is there a way to run "apt" without accepting all of the packages they show??

Here's why I'm asking . . . over in my desktop I have a new-ish bare metal install of Debian testing, and I had the same problem the other day, I just blithely ran apt and while it was installing I started seeing these packages with "libreoffice x x x x -de" and various such "suffixes" indicating languages. I thought it was because I had inadvertently hit the "language packages" icon on the Debian desktop, which automatically opened a terminal like window and started loading the languages . . . at that time I just quit the app to stop it. But then, a couple days later all those packages showed up, and I had to go into Synaptic and searching "libreoffice" showed all approx. 467 language/help packages and I manually went through and "marked for complete removal" . . . didn't know any "batch" way to remove them . . . w/o it being "scorched earth."

So, back over here in the laptop, booted up in persistent state . . . seems like apt wants to add all of the many languages in, even though I didn't ask for them . . . is there a way to "remove the request for international communication"???? before running apt, or, I'd have to do it the way I did it recently . . . install them, then go into Synaptic and remove them??? I don't want to remove "English" or "Merican" . . . but no need to have all of the planetary communications in my usb persistent state drive . . . .

thanks.

[Head_on_a_Stick]

Can you remove the l10n packages?

Code: Select all

# apt purge 'libreoffice-l10n-*'

Or use 'aptitude hold $package' to stop it being upgraded thereafter (replace $package with the actual name(s) of the package(s)).

[este.el.paz]

Can you remove the l10n packages?

Code: Select all

# apt purge 'libreoffice-l10n-*'

Or use 'aptitude hold $package' to stop it being upgraded thereafter (replace $package with the actual name(s) of the package(s)).

@H_o_a_S:

Thanks for the reply . . . in the case of the persistent drive edition, I didn't run the update so no packages are installed, because I didn't want to "manually" pick it clean like I did in the desktop edition . . . . But I guess I could try that "hold package" command . . . the problem is that each language has their own package name, each is a "line item" in the install, etc. In the case of the desktop I have a little more disk space to play with than I do in the usb drive, trying to save space where I can . . . but, it's a lot of packages to cover all of the languages offered in Debian . . . .

If I get a few minutes I might see if I can uncheck the packages in synaptic . . . see what happens. Back in '12 when I joined this forum it seemed like Debian users were people who only wanted "MBs" for running the basic system, rather than "GBs" . . . and no room for "fat" . . . they only ate "lean" . . . nothing that wasn't needed except "skeleton crew" . . . . ??? : - )))))