Can I safely uninstall some default applications?

Greetings lovely community,

Here’s just a list of programs, which I believe most if not all, were installed by default on EndeavourOS Gnome edition. I’ve installed some of my own applications, but if I can safely uninstall some of these, it would get rid of some of the application clutter. If I have to keep any of them though, it’s not a big deal either, just curious if any of these can be removed without any issues. Thanks for any help!

  • Advanced Network Configuration (this one feels redundant, Gnomes Wifi manager does the same thing)
  • Avahi SSH Server Browser (no clue what this is, dont think I need it I just use my laptop at home)
  • Avahi VNC Server Browser
  • Avahi Zeroconf Browser
  • Diffuse Merge Tool (I use Gedit)
  • Gnome Web (I use Vivaldi)
  • Hardware locality lstopo
  • Icon Browser
  • Software Token (no clue what this is or if I even need it)
  • Software Token (small)
  • Gnome Terminal (I use Tilix)
  • UXTerm
  • XTerm
  • YAD Settings (not sure if this needs to be kept or not)

These show up in Gnomes application overview, but for some of them I don’t know their actual name so I can’t find them via pamac or in the terminal to remove some of them even if I wanted to, so if anyone can shed some light on that, that’d be sweet, thank you!

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Up to you. Gnome doesn’t like to be tampered with. Sounds like you want to customize your install.

You can use the command pactree -r to see what is dependent on those packages.

For example, the welcome application needs yad.

Most of those can be removed. I think avahi is used by some printing related services.

If you need to know which package those files belong to look at what file they are calling and then use pacman -Qo on that file.

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Far too many things rely on avahi. The system would be effectively destroyed if you removed it.

The one time I used gnome I uninstalled everything I could get away with. Basically everything except Cheese because it’s required (for some reason…)

Diffuse, gnome web, icon browser, gnome terminal and yad settings can be removed (might remove yad which will remove Welcome and the other EOS tools).

I assume you can remove XTerm and UXterm but I have never tried. lstopo is a dependancy of a few things.

As @Dalto said, pactree is useful when you aren’t 100% sure something is unecessary.

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libcups depends on avahi and both gtk3 and qt5-base rely on libcups. So you can remove it but it will also remove all your gtk and qt applications/DEs. :smile:

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Perhaps I’ll just shove all these in a Miscellaneous folder in the applications overview and completely forget about them just to be on the safe side of things haha. Last thing I wanna do it mess anything up! Thanks for the commands and insights everyone :slight_smile:

You can hide them if you prefer.

Oh I didn’t know there was a way to hide applications in Gnomes application overview? How exactly is that done I wonder?

You can either make a copy of the .desktop files in ~/.local/share/applications and hide them that way or use a tool like menulibre. To be fair, I haven’t tested that in gnome 40 yet.

Ahh okay, I have used menulibre in the past, but not in quite a while (years perhaps?). For now I’ll just drop them all in a folder that does the job just fine, so I don’t think I’m gonna worry about it too much. It’s good to know that there are a few options to tinker around with thought, but the folder idea just seems the easiest and the laziest approach which I’m totally fine with for now :stuck_out_tongue:

I simply rename the xxx.desktop file to xxx.desktopbkup

The application overview will not see them and IF you ever need them simply rename the file to remove the bkup.

Pudge

EDIT:
You cannot remove the avahi entries and a few other entries using the above.
Install alacarte (Main Menu in the applications list)
Then launch alacarte and go to this tab
alacarte

You will see two avahi entries. Click to remove the check in the blue box, then highlight the item and click on “Delete”. The avahi icons will no longer be in the applications menu but are still installed for whatever needs them.

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Here is a script I run immediately after a Gnome install.

#!/bin/bash

# add ll alias
printf "\nalias ll='ls -l --color=auto'\n\n" >> /etc/bash.bashrc

# Remove from Gnome package
 pacman -R baobab epiphany gnome-books gnome-calendar gnome-clocks gnome-contacts gnome-dictionary gnome-documents gnome-getting-started-docs gnome-maps gnome-music gnome-photos gnome-remote-desktop gnome-todo gnome-user-docs gnome-user-share gnome-weather orca sushi

mv /usr/share/applications/stoken-gui.desktop /usr/share/applications/stoken-gui.desktopbkup
mv /usr/share/applications/stoken-gui-small.desktop /usr/share/applications/stoken-gui-small.desktopbkup
mv /usr/share/applications/qv4l2.desktop /usr/share/applications/qv4l2.desktopbkup
mv /usr/share/applications/qvidcap.desktop /usr/share/applications/qvidcap.desktopbkup
mv /usr/share/applications/yad-icon-browser.desktop /usr/share/applications/yad-icon-browser.desktopbkup
mv /usr/share/applications/avahi-discover.desktop /usr/share/applications/avahi-discover.desktopbkup
mv /usr/share/applications/cups.desktop /usr/share/applications/cups.desktopbkup

 pacman -S --noconfirm gparted gnome-tweaks sshfs alacarte bluegriffon arc-gtk-theme gufw
 pacman -S flatpak

Use at your own risk. You may need to tweak it to suit your needs.

Pudge

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Thanks for the extra information and the example in your .bash script! I tend to use mostly Gnome things so I’d definitely have to tweak that script quite a bit to suite my needs, but that’s definitely something that can come in handy. Don’t mind me if I copy it, edit it, and use it if I need to ever do another fresh install :wink:

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