After a one week break of using EndeavourOS I just booted it to advance my skills a little further.
Immediately after login to desktop environment, Discover has popped up, announcing that there are 90 (!) updates available. When checking the update package list I saw that Discover would like me to newly install a whole bunch of KDE-Plasma-bloatwhare what I strictly want to avoid. Even worse, it wanted me to add a lot of software that was strictly not installed before (Plasma Engine Explorer, Theme Explorer, etc.).
Probably my request is mainly considering KDE-Plasma-updates, but maybe also system files are bloating up time by time in Arch Linux? I am coming from Debian - at least on Debian systems only packages get updated that have already been installed before. Therefore the system remains clean a very long time.
How can I configure Discover to only download updates of packages that are already installed on the system without messing up my clean machine with gallons of unwanted bloatware?
Or should I better avoid using Discover and apply $ pacman -Syyu instead?
Maybe when you installed Endeavour you installed the complete KDE/Plasma desktop instead of selecting the stripped down version ?
Discover only updates what is already installed on your system, it doesnât install new things you donât have or want. What does Endeavour updater show ? should show the same updates as Discover except Discover wonât show updates from AUR. Discover is good GUI for things (like pamac) but EOS native updater (yay+pacman) is the best for keeping your system going.
Unfortunately I didnât take a screenshot, but most packages began with KDE-Plasma-blablabla. Concerning bloatware, there has been installed the following stuff for example:
Cuttlefish
Plasma Engine Explorer
Plasma Global Theme Explorer
Plasma Theme Explorer
UserFeedback Console
Software Token
Bluetooth
Kwallet
a thousand of different fonts
I donât remember more right now.
It seems that most packages have now been installed, even I have explicitely unselected them during the installation in Calamares.
During Calamares installation progress, I have only selected the following KDE packages:
plasma
packagekit-qt5
fwupd
python-dbus
Nothing more⌠So I am a little bit annoyed that Discover has installed all the bloatware by itself without asking. Maybe I wonât install Discover anymore and just use the CLI for updates instead.
In Arch, packages are either âdependenciesâ or âoptionalâ. Nothing gets installed you didnât explicitly want; so no bloatware. Of course, if B is a dependancy of A, and C a dependancy of B, youâll end up with A, B and C by âonlyâ installing A.
There you have it:
Cuttlefish, ⌠Theme Explorer etc. are part of the package âplasma-sdkâ, which itself is part of the group plasma. Your initial install already contained all the packages you consider bloatware. These were only being updated, not installed without your consent.
What youâre actually asking is for the EndeavourOS ISO to allow a more minimal KDE Installation. Or, you could just install without a DE and then set up a minimal KDE following the Arch Wiki.
As others have pointed out, plasma is a group that contains many packages. Most of the packages you listed are either directly part of the plasma group or dependencies of the packages in the plasma group. Not all of them are required to run plasma.
The core plasma package is called plasma-desktop. Installing it and itâs dependencies will give you a minimal plasma environment.
At this point, rather than reinstall, you can simply remove the packages you donât need. Keep in mind, you need to do this carefully as some of them may be dependencies of other things. I know kwallet is is not something you can remove since kio depends on it.
Okay, thank you for this explanation! That means, different to Debian, in Arch there is no further separation between âRecommendedâ and âSuggestedâ? There are just real Dependencies and optional packages?
