KDE Plasma: Switching from "plasma-meta" to "plasma-desktop"?

Lounge Linux lounge
1

I’m using Arch Linux installed via archinstall script 3.0.15. Until then, the package plasma-meta was installed with all its dependencies. Also, KDE Discover was installed as a dependency.

When trying to remove KDE Discover, it is not possible.

$ sudo pacman -R discover
checking dependencies...
error: failed to prepare transaction (could not satisfy dependencies)
:: removing discover breaks dependency 'discover' required by plasma-meta

Since the new version 4 of the archinstall script, plasma-desktop is installed.

This package has fewer dependencies, and so KDE Plasma is not installed.

I’d like to avoid reinstalling Arch Linux. Maybe it is possible to switch from plasma-meta to plasma-desktop and remove all unneeded dependencies like KDE Discover? Would be great if that would be possible.

2

Just from what I would do, even though I don’t use KDE Plasma. Logout of your Plasma session, switch to another tty and login with your user account. Remove “plasma-meta”, after that is removed install “plasma-desktop”. It should pull in all the needed dependencies and then you should be able to login again but be sure to check if also sddm or Plasma login manager is installed.

3

Sounds like a good idea. I’ll create a system backup before trying that so I’m able to go back if that doesn’t work. :slight_smile:

4

For the love of God don’t use to plasma-desktop. It’s a horrible fever dream by Arch packagers trying to provide some kind of “minimal” plasma desktop - fully unsupported by upstream KDE.

5

But when installing Arch Linux via archinstall now, it will be installed. What should I do instead?

6

You don’t need to “switch” you should already have everything you need installed.

Just sudo pacman -R plasma-meta and then mark the components of plasma you care about as explicitly installed.

Then you can remove discover

7

And it’s already been somewhat reverted in archinstall:

8

I wish you the best of luck with the campaign. Please let me know how it goes afterward.

9

You can just also choose to install Arch Linux without a desktop and then just add whatever you want afterwards.

10

Pretty sure you meant the meta package is a nightmare. Should of never been created. I avoid distros that use it, cause there are a few KDE apps that most distros use that I don’t and I want to be able to remove them without having to replace everything KDE to do so.

11

Good point. So you are able to choose which KDE package you wanna install. :+1:

12

I‘ll try that as soon as I‘m back home in front of my computer. :+1:

13

This worked like a charm!

First I removed plasma-meta. No packages were removed.

Then I was able to remove discover with all its dependencies.

Furthermore, I could remove flatpak-kcm with all its dependencies because I’m not using Flatpak packages.

Great! No need to reinstall Arch Linux. Thanks, @dalto ! :folded_hands:

14

Goddamn, now I have plenty of orphan packages. :frowning:

kde-gtk-config
kdeplasma-addons
krdp
kwallet-pam
kwrited
oxygen
oxygen-sounds
plasma-browser-integration
plasma-desktop
plasma-firewall
plasma-login-manager
plasma-systemmonitor
plasma-thunderbolt
plasma-vault
plasma-welcome
print-manager

I think I shouldn’t remove them … What should I do to get them out of the orphan packages list? :thinking:

15

I mentioned that above, set them as explicitly installed.

sudo pacman -D --asexplicit <packagename>
16

OMG … That’s it. Thank you very much! :+1:

17

I meant exactly what I said. That is the plasma desktop as KDE intends to ship it. Somebody doesn’t “like” some packages and want to scrape ten MB from their 1 TB drive? Fine, by me. But don’t ship something broken out of the box, make it the user’s responsibility to maintain their particular flavor. Just like OP decoupled from upstream now and has the responsibility to maintain their custom plasma installation in the future.