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