Calamares Package Selector: Minimum mandatory Packages for ultra-lightweight System with (unbloated) KDE-Plasma?

It would be a lot of work to describe what all those packages do. It is easy enough to look them up yourself. I will go over a few of the more obvious ones:

  • gvfs-mtp (optional for mobile phones)
  • gvfs-smb (optional for samba-shares)

These are not required and will probably bring in dependencies. They may be convenient depending on what you are doing.

  • smartmontools (optional for SSDs?)

They are optional for all hard drives but I would recommend keeping it

  • dnsutils (mandatory for web browser?)

You probably want this. It includes dns tools like dig and nslookup

  • modemmanager (necessary?)

For cellular support

  • netctl (not necessary when using networkmanager?)

I would say not needed

  • net-tools (optional networking toolkit, but useful at all?)

Only you know what you find useful netstat is in this package, that can be useful.

  • dhclient (alert system for memory usage etc.?)

Isn’t it a dhcp client?

  • ethtool (optional for network scanning)

It is not for network scanning, it is for managing network interfaces. I would install it. If you need it later, your network might be broken and it may be difficult to install at that point.

  • dialog (actually just cosmetics, no?)

Usually this is a requirement of something else. It displays tui dialogs.

  • mtools (what is this?)

More DOS stuff

  • openssh (useful for SSH-access to several devices)

Useful for a lot of things.

  • os-prober (what is this)?

Used to detect other OSes for multi-booting

  • lsb-release (seems to be a platform for third party software - mandatory?)

lsb-release is just the command lsb_release and the file /etc/lsb_release. It is something present in most other Linux distros and some software will not function properly if it can’t find it. It is optional though. It is also tiny and harmless.

  • packagekit-qt5

Enables support for package update and installation via discover and other qt applications

  • fwupd (for firmware updates of machines hardware?)

Yes

  • python-dbus (probably useful for application message exchange?)

You only need this if something else depends on it.

  • kdebase-meta (just optional because of KDE-refinement bloatware?)

Totally optional

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