Remove Gnome and replace with KDE?

[joemartin]

I have been running a stable install for quite some time with Gnome but found that I much prefer KDE...

Is it possible to add KDE now and still get all KDE tweaks I would have had if I chosen that as my desktop environment at install and on that disc? Or, am I better off re-installing the KDE from disc that would have the Debian KDE modified tweaks?

Also, how would I fully delete Gnome once KDE is installed?

Thanks for your help.

[dasein]

You can install KDE as you would any other package. The "full boat" (or should that be "full bloat"? ) metapackage is called kde-full. There are a handful of goodies "missing" from that metapackage, but installing those is equally straightforward.

Until/unless you purge GNOME, the main "issue" you'll encounter during the transition is that you'll have "two of everything"--two file managers, two music players, etc. It makes for a fairly cluttered system menu, but it's not unworkable.

I would urge you in the strongest possible terms not to uninstall GNOME until you are 100% certain that you have KDE fully tweaked and running to your liking. Ignore this advice at your own peril.

[joemartin]

What are the handful of goodies missing from KDE-Full? Thanks for the reply.

[dasein]

What are the handful of goodies missing from KDE-Full? Thanks for the reply.

I installed Wheezy a year and a half ago, so I don't remember exactly. Install kde-full, use it for a few days, figure out what's missing for your use-case, and install additional packages as necessary.

[joemartin]

Ok, so I have KDE-Full installed and all is well.

Can someone please enlighten me on how to purge all Gnome safely without interrupting my KDE install?

Thanks again for your help.

[sunrat]

Ok, so I have KDE-Full installed and all is well.

Great. I use and recommend KDE.

Can someone please enlighten me on how to purge all Gnome safely without interrupting my KDE install?

Probably no simple way to do it. Even in KDE there are some common dependencies that will mess things up if you totally remove Gnome. Safest way is probably to remove the Gnome metapackage without removing its dependencies, then remove each individual package after checking what depends on it with apt-cache rdepends.
Easiest way is to remove the metapackage with all it's dependencies and try and fix any problems that causes. This may or may not damage your system, probably not. If it does, you get to keep all the pieces.
You can see what packages gnome depends on with apt-cache show gnome.
You can see what is installed from Gnome with apt-cache depends --installed gnome
eg. here is mine from a KDE system without Gnome:

Code: Select all

apt-cache depends --installed gnome
gnome
    avahi-daemon:i386
  Depends: gimp
  Depends: inkscape
  Depends: abiword
  Depends: gstreamer1.0-plugins-ugly
  Depends: libgtk2-perl

Actually nothing life threatening there so my above cautions may be overkill. libgtk2-perl removal would cause a couple of other programs to misbehave eg. synaptic.

[hhh]

The Debian Wiki entry for Xfce has these instructions for removing GNOME...

Optional: If you want to uninstall GNOME and its dependencies first, do:

Code: Select all

aptitude purge `dpkg --get-selections | grep gnome | cut -f 1`
aptitude -f install
aptitude purge `dpkg --get-selections | grep deinstall | cut -f 1`
aptitude -f install

https://wiki.debian.org/Xfce#Install_Xf ... led_system

Use at your own risk.

[SwirlyPenguin]

This should do on jessie:

WARNING:Use at your own risk, this should not remove other GTK apps, like Synaptic etc, but I am not responsible for any losses!

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get remove aisleriot alacarte baobab bijiben brasero brasero-cdrkit byzanz caribou caribou-antler cheese  dconf-editor dconf-tools empathy eog evince evolution evolution-data-server evolution-plugins file-roller five-or-more four-in-a-row gcr gdm3 gedit gedit-plugins gkbd-capplet gnome-applets gnome-bluetooth gnome-brave-icon-theme gnome-calculator gnome-chess gnome-clocks gnome-color-manager gnome-colors gnome-colors-common gnome-contacts gnome-control-center gnome-dictionary gnome-disk-utility gnome-documents gnome-dust-icon-theme gnome-flashback gnome-font-viewer gnome-games gnome-getting-started-docs gnome-human-icon-theme gnome-illustrious-icon-theme gnome-keyring gnome-klotski gnome-logs gnome-mahjongg gnome-maps gnome-media gnome-mines gnome-music gnome-nettool gnome-nibbles gnome-noble-icon-theme gnome-online-accounts gnome-orca gnome-packagekit gnome-packagekit-session gnome-panel gnome-photos gnome-power-manager gnome-robots gnome-screensaver gnome-screenshot gnome-session gnome-session-bin gnome-session-canberra gnome-session-flashback gnome-settings-daemon gnome-shell gnome-shell-extension-weather gnome-shell-extensions gnome-sound-recorder gnome-sudoku gnome-sushi gnome-system-log gnome-system-monitor gnome-terminal gnome-tetravex gnome-themes-standard gnome-themes-standard-data gnome-tweak-tool gnome-user-guide gnome-user-share   lightsoff metacity mousetweaks mutter nautilus nautilus-sendto network-manager-gnome notification-daemon polari policykit-1-gnome python3-aptdaemon.gtk3widgets quadrapassel rhythmbox rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder rhythmbox-plugins seahorse shiki-brave-theme shiki-colors shiki-colors-metacity-theme shiki-dust-theme shiki-human-theme shiki-illustrious-theme shiki-noble-theme shiki-wine-theme shiki-wise-theme simple-scan  swell-foop tali totem totem-plugins tracker-gui transmission-gtk vinagre vino xdg-user-dirs-gtk yelp zeitgeist zeitgeist-datahub zenity

[Hallvor]

As root: # tasksel

Unselect desktop environment.

[MichaelW]

As root: # tasksel

Unselect desktop environment.

This is the safest option. I made the mistake of uninstalling Gnome and removing some core packages which killed my network functionality. However, when I removed KDE using this method, I didn't have a single problem.