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Safely change DE

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fch
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Safely change DE

#1 Post by fch »

Is it possible to change DE, and remove the previous without bad consequences? I would like to change from mate to gnome.


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Re: Safely change DE

#3 Post by fch »

I did it, all went fine so far, but now I would like to remove evolution and gnome-music, but it will remove gnome toghether, is there a way to remove those gnome packages wihout removing gnome-desktop?

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Re: Safely change DE

#4 Post by jmgibson1981 »

What I do when I want to change DE is reboot then go to a virtual tty and login. Run this command

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apt list | grep installed | grep -v ^lib | awk '{print $1}' | more
This gives me a list of installed packages. Just work my way through the list looking for anything desktop related. After a few runs you get a good idea of what stays and what can go. Run this command then.

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apt --purge autoremove "$PACKAGE"
Don't run it with the -y flag so you can look at what it's going to remove. Takes me a few go's with the apt autoremove but it does work. If something doesn't look right in the "packages to be removed" then don't run it, that means it's quite essential.

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Re: Safely change DE

#5 Post by dilberts_left_nut »

Sounds like hard work.
You should try 'aptitude'.
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Re: Safely change DE

#6 Post by Hallvor »

fch wrote: 2022-06-22 07:24 I did it, all went fine so far, but now I would like to remove evolution and gnome-music, but it will remove gnome toghether, is there a way to remove those gnome packages wihout removing gnome-desktop?
Like this?

Remove a single package

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# apt-get remove nameofpackage
Reset the metapackage to prevent uninstallation of the entire metapackage

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# aptitude keep-all
[HowTo] Install and configure Debian bookworm
Debian 12 | KDE Plasma | ThinkPad T440s | 4 × Intel® Core™ i7-4600U CPU @ 2.10GHz | 12 GiB RAM | Mesa Intel® HD Graphics 4400 | 1 TB SSD

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Re: Safely change DE

#7 Post by jmgibson1981 »

It is hard work. And I don't know why, Debian is better than Ubuntu but doing it any other way leaves stuff behind.

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Re: Safely change DE

#8 Post by arzgi »

I think gnome violates dependencies. Don't know how many times i have purge gnome*doc after installing a single gnome program to xfce. I also don't like metapackages as they pull too much.

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Re: Safely change DE

#9 Post by CwF »

jmgibson1981 wrote: 2022-06-23 09:17 It is hard work. And I don't know why, Debian is better than Ubuntu but doing it any other way leaves stuff behind.
try
https://packages.debian.org/search?keyw ... lla-search

I do it manually, and maintain a cherrytree based on the directory/file structure. Tedium eventually pays off. Doing so for so long, backing up /home is the last thing I'd ever do. It is essentially 90% cruft.

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Re: Safely change DE

#10 Post by sunrat »

Installed packages which are unused will not generally do anything except take up space. You may find the space recovered by spending hours rooting them out is surprisingly little. Is a few hundred MB worth the time, especially on a multi-terabyte system?
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Those who have lost data
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Re: Safely change DE

#11 Post by CwF »

sunrat wrote: 2022-06-23 22:23 ...You may find the space recovered by spending hours rooting them out is surprisingly little. Is a few hundred MB worth the time, ...?
No, not really.
But it is an methodology question. If you built up from nothing, and payed attention while doing so, the effort is automated, or simply learned along the way. This is not the same as installing a complete 'turn-key' distro, adding and subtracting at whim only paying attention to the surface result, and then trying to put it on a diet.

The OP quest is very simple, take it apart, put it back together. Aptitude, the preferred way for such a task. Then again, I've said a blinking cursor on a blank screen is a starting point. For most it's a reason to reinstall. The tedium does pay off, eventually. Destructive testing provides the aggregate for smooth pavement. Eventually, we learn there is no magic, just lots we don't know. That's always the worry. One-way tickets to doom actually aren't that common.

I recently archived an image of a complete Bullseye for bare metal use, considering whether I'm going to visit again. Bookworm is working even better, mostly, so to disk goes the compressed image of 1547MB. Pretty tidy for a 7 year old install of Jessie. Bookworm will carry all that cruft forward one more generation...

Most simply don't need to know

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Re: Safely change DE

#12 Post by sunrat »

CwF wrote: 2022-06-23 23:04Eventually, we learn there is no magic, just lots we don't know.
Amen. :D
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Re: Safely change DE

#13 Post by jmgibson1981 »

For me it's not space. Just don't like things that serve no purpose on my machine. One of the reason's I bailed on Ubuntu and came back to Debian was because I see no reason I need the whole Gnome stack to run Xfce. Don't mind a few things here and there but an entire DE that is just there. Seems pointless to me.

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Re: Safely change DE

#14 Post by fch »

that's bizarre what happened, I remove evolution and gnome was removed too as a consequence. My battery was very low end it died soon after. Rebooting again it works as nothing has happened, and I have gnome not installed. Is the packaged 'gnome' not the DE itself?
It would make sense for some user that never uses the terminal to go the gnome store and remove evolution, and it also removes gnome together to that action not destroy the system

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Re: Safely change DE

#15 Post by Hallvor »

Removing the desktop environment isn't ruining the system. You can just type tasksel (as root) in a command line interface and select a new one.
[HowTo] Install and configure Debian bookworm
Debian 12 | KDE Plasma | ThinkPad T440s | 4 × Intel® Core™ i7-4600U CPU @ 2.10GHz | 12 GiB RAM | Mesa Intel® HD Graphics 4400 | 1 TB SSD

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Re: Safely change DE

#16 Post by fch »

Hallvor wrote: 2022-06-28 15:36 Removing the desktop environment isn't ruining the system. You can just type tasksel (as root) in a command line interface and select a new one.
Yes, but removing the package gnome did not remove the DE gnome. I do not know why, do you?

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Re: Safely change DE

#17 Post by Hallvor »

The package gnome is just the metapackage gnome, not the entire desktop environment: https://packages.debian.org/search?keyw ... ection=all

If you really want to get rid of everything (or almost everything), try this:

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# tasksel
uncheck Gnome

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# apt-get purge gnome*
Good luck logging into Gnome after a reboot then. :mrgreen:
[HowTo] Install and configure Debian bookworm
Debian 12 | KDE Plasma | ThinkPad T440s | 4 × Intel® Core™ i7-4600U CPU @ 2.10GHz | 12 GiB RAM | Mesa Intel® HD Graphics 4400 | 1 TB SSD

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Re: Safely change DE

#18 Post by fch »

Hallvor wrote: 2022-06-28 15:45 The package gnome is just the metapackage gnome, not the entire desktop environment: https://packages.debian.org/search?keyw ... ection=all

If you really want to get rid of everything (or almost everything), try this:

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# tasksel
uncheck Gnome

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# apt-get purge gnome*
Good luck logging into Gnome after a reboot then. :mrgreen:
On now it makes sense! No sir, I am fine liek it is now, just wanted to remove those extra packages of gnome useless for me. But thanks for explaning me why.

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Re: Safely change DE

#19 Post by sunrat »

Hallvor wrote: 2022-06-28 15:45

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# apt-get purge gnome*
There are a lot of dependencies of the gnome metapackage which don't have "gnome" in their title. See:

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apt depends gnome
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Those who have lost data
...and those who have not lost data YET ”
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Re: Safely change DE

#20 Post by fch »

sunrat wrote: 2022-06-28 22:14
Hallvor wrote: 2022-06-28 15:45

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# apt-get purge gnome*
There are a lot of dependencies of the gnome metapackage which don't have "gnome" in their title. See:

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apt depends gnome
I don't understand it quite well, those packages showed on

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apt depends gnome
will not work properly without the package gnome?

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